Our long national nightmare may be over in about 28 days...but it ain't over yet. Not by a long shot. And, as detailed on today's BradCast, it's becoming more unnerving by the second, with Donald Trump's mental health seemingly devolving rapidly with each and every one. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Curiously, corporate media are sounding more and more like The BradCast with each passing day. Among the stories underscoring that point as Trump's days in the White House continue to wane (whether he is able to admit that out-loud or not)...

• CNN's Stephen Collinson on Trump's "30-day reign of destruction on the way out of office";

• "Trump turns on everyone," reports Jonathan Swan at Axios. "Everyone" now appears to include "Vice President Pence, chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Secretary of State Pompeo and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell." (With a hat-tip to Lincoln Project, for their video getting inside Trump's head regarding Pence);

• Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr reports anxiety is rising at DoD, with one officer telling her "We don't know what he might do" in these final days. They were particularly alarmed after talk from disgraced and pardoned former National Security Advisor, Lt. General Michael Flynn's call for Trump to invoke Martial Law and order the military to "re-run" the election in some states that Trump lost. The military, according to Starr, wants nothing to do with any of it. We hope her reporting is accurate;

• Amid all of this, Trump unleashed another wave of Presidential pardons for his friends and the friends of his friends on Tuesday night. This time for 4 war criminals charged with murder for carrying out a massacre of Iraqi civilians while employees for Blackwater, the mercenary company owned by Eric Prince (brother of Trump's Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos); 3 corrupt, felonious Republican former Congressmembers (including the first two members of Congress to endorse him, Chris Collins of NY and Duncan Hunter, Jr. of CA); and 2 Campaign staffers who plead guilty to felonies tied to the Robert Mueller Special Counsel probe into Russian interference during the 2016 election. (And, after getting off air tonight, Trump has issued still more pardons for still more of his friends, including for his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former campaign advisor Roger Stone, and for Charles Kushner, father of his son-in-law Jared, all convicted of multiple felonies);

• But wait, there's more. Much more! During an unhinged, pre-taped White House video posted to Twitter last night, Trump threatened to veto the $900 billion COVID relief bill attached to the government's must-pass annual spending bill to avoid shutting down again. The long-overdue emergency relief was finally passed by Congress after eight months of Trump refusing to participate in negotiations. He's now pretending to be upset that stimulus checks to be sent to many Americans will only be $600. Congressional Republicans and White House negotiators insisted it could be more no more than that. But Trump now suggests he may veto the measure unless payments are increased to $2000. Dems, who had been trying to increase the amount of payments for months immediately joined Trump's call. Congressional Republicans (and the two incumbent Republican Senators running in the January 5th runoffs) are apparently furious, confused, and not sure how to fulfill the demands of their Frankenstein's monster;

• And, just before airtime, Trump vetoed another long-negotiated must-pass bill, the $790 billion Military Authorization spending bill which was enacted last week by veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress;

• That's only a taste of what, according to the Washington Post today, has now "plunged" the GOP "into open warfare over President elect Joe Biden's election victory --- with President Trump taunting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and threatening primary challenges against other Republicans, House lawmakers egging on senators to contest the counting of electoral college votes next month, and senior GOP senators rebuffing that effort as a pointless political exercise";

• All of which, as the New York Times reports today, has resulted in Trump at the "most unleashed...and...most unpredictable point in his presidency," while he is desperately "focused on the one area in which he is powerless to get what he wants: a way to avoid leaving office as a loser";

With that nightmarish backdrop, our guest today, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo joins us to explain why Trump's final days are "more frightening than Nixon's" as he "seems to be having a very public nervous breakdown."

"We knew he wasn't going to act like a normal President and be gracious and have Biden over coffee. I didn't expect that," she tells me. "But this? He's so incredibly afraid of being called a loser that he's turned himself into the greatest sore loser in world history!"

"He's clearly melting down," she adds. "As far as I am concerned, when you have a President who is melting down, who has this capacity to launch a nuclear war, we're in a very dangerous situation."

She also has a number of thoughts on where this all goes "beyond Trump," after the (theoretically) inevitable Inauguration of Joe Biden, if we manage to get there. "The rationalization of these people. The brain-poisoning...The absolutely servile Republican Party that has completely abdicated all responsibility," observes Parton. "He is the Republican party. They are part of it, if they choose to be. But there is no Republican Establishment. There's only him."

This, she cautions, is "Trump's last stand," before adding ominously: "At least, we think it is."

We've tried to touch base with Parton at many of the landmark moments throughout the nightmarish Trump Presidency (and candidacy --- she was also with us the day he descended the gilded escalator at Trump Tower to announce his run for office in 2015.) So, with all of this madness swirling and our long national nightmare before Christmas continuing, it seems like today was another perfect moment to check in with her for our last interview before standing down for the holidays. (Don't worry! Nicole Sandler will be in for us with fresh shows next week! So please stay tuned in!)

Finally, with the critical U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia now underway, and control of the U.S. Senate hanging in the balance --- (we also discuss with Parton what the January 5 Election Day in GA could mean for the January 6 affirmation of Biden's Electoral College win in Congress on January 6) --- we close with a new tune from Patty Austin with a very important message for our friends in the Peach State: "Georgia, You're Voting for Me Too!"...

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On today's BradCast: Donald Trump's days in the White House are ending, but his response to that reality (and the reality of the most devastating hack of the U.S. government ever) is becoming more manic and desperate by the day. But at least, after nine months, Republicans have seen fit to allow some much-needed, long-overdue financial relief for sick, dying and desperate Americans as both Trump and the GOP's failed response to the pandemic has killed more than 316,000 Americans and may finally be catching up to them politically.

There was reportedly shouting and chaos --- even more than usual --- at the White House over the weekend, as Trump and his clown car friends and attorneys met to propose last gasp efforts to somehow steal and/or undermine the 2020 election. Trump's disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn --- recently pardoned by Trump for lying to the FBI --- is said to have called on the President to declare martial law to allow the military to re-run the Presidential election in swing-states that Trump lost; Team Trump attorney and professional conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell sought to be appointed as a Special Counsel to investigate 2020 "fraud"; and Team Trump's other corrupt, nut-ball attorney, Rudy Giuliani, reportedly wanted DHS to impound voting machines from battleground states for some reason. Trump's very Trumpy White House staff reportedly pushed back on all of those ideas, incredibly enough, and his outgoing Attorney General, Bill Barr, whose last day at DoJ is Wednesday, said in his final presser as AG on Monday that he saw no reason to appoint a special counsel and no legal grounds for the federal government to seize voting machines.

As that played out, over in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who had refused to even negotiate with Democrats on a new COVID relief bill for the past nine months following the passage of the initial $2.2 trillion CARES Act in March, finally relented to allow another round of relief --- albeit much smaller --- to be adopted by Congress. That, following more than 16 million infections, hundreds of thousands of deaths and an economy in tatters. The $900 billion package he finally agreed to includes one time $600 payments for many Americans and extends unemployment insurance which runs out entirely by the end of the year, as tens of millions of Americans are now out of work due to the Administration's wildly mishandled pandemic. The package also includes nutrition assistance for the hungry, another round of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for small businesses, money for hospitals and vaccine distribution, and even rent assistance, for the first time, among other things.

It's not nearly enough, says our guest today. But it's something, and it includes "nothing objectionable," at least for the most part. We're joined today by The American Prospect's Executive Editor, investigative financial journalist and author DAVID DAYEN, for details on the measure which he has been covering in-depth for months in his daily, indispensable "UNSANITIZED" report. Dayen explains what's in the bill and what is not, and why that is, along with why it is that McConnell even allowed the measure to come up for a vote at all after months of refusing to do so.

He argues that It's all about the January 5th U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia, which will determine control of Congress' upper chamber for the next two years. "Mitch McConnell's Senate majority was on the line if he didn't get something done," says Dayen. "If McConnell manages to win at least one of those races in Georgia, he's going to be in control again. Joe Biden will be President, and every dollar that Mitch McConnell agrees to put into the economy is a dollar that helps Joe Biden."

"The question of how 'Not Enough' this bill is entirely is predicated on how fast we can vaccinate people," Dayen explains. "If we can vaccinate everyone by April, then we're probably going to get a rickety but sufficient bridge." But, he adds, if Biden's incoming Surgeon General is right when he noted over the weekend that "we won't get widespread availability of the vaccine until early Fall, then we're in big, big trouble. Because there's no more must-pass bills. The government is now funded through September of next year." That, Dayen notes, means that there is little if any leverage for Democrats to force Republicans to act on behalf of the American people.

"Democrats had to take out grants for state and local government relief," to get this bill passed, he tells me. "So when we get into next year, cities and states that have had these tremendous budget shortfalls, they are the ones who have to figure out how to fill that shortfall when they have no help from the federal government coming. It's likely going to result in cuts to public safety, teachers, firefighters, and public employees and not filling your potholes --- all sort of things at the local level that are going to have to be foregone because there is no money available. Mitch McConnell knows this, [and] that it could have the effect of offsetting any kind of recovery efforts at the federal level. We saw that in 2009. That stunted the overall recovery of the economy, and we're walking into it again." And with McConnell's eyes on 2022, he's likely just fine with that.

All of this underscores the importance of those two U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia in January, and that Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff ought to be reminding voters every day that if they want any real relief from the federal government for the economic disasters that are almost certain to worsen due to all of this, they must elect both of them to give Senate control to the Democrats under a Biden Administration.

Finally, we've been reporting over the past week on two voting machines companies who have been threatening defamation lawsuits against Rightwing media outlets and the Team Trump attorneys who have been offering false claims that the companies were somehow involved in stealing the election for Joe Biden by flipping votes cast for Donald Trump. Last week, Smartmatic, which has no voting systems in any of the swing-states where Trump is trying to reverse his losses to Biden, threatened rightwing propaganda channels Fox "News", Newsmax and One American News Network (OANN) with defamation suits. They were sent a letter to instruct them that they would be sued if they did not retract false claims about the company, including allegations (apparently bastardized from our original, accurate investigative reporting from 10 years ago) that Smartmatic was somehow working with Venezuela's dead President Hugo Chavez and George Soros, along with the company's competitor Dominion Voting Systems in an international conspiracy to steal the election for Biden.

A day or two after Smartmatic's letter, Dominion sent a similar defamation threat letter to Team Trump attorney Powell seeking a retraction for her outlandish, evidence-free claims about the company.

On Friday then, in a bizarre segment on Fox' Lou Dobbs Tonight' --- which looked and sounded a lot like a deposition led by a disembodied off-camera voice --- Eddie Perez of the Open Source Election Technology (OSET) institute (he most recently appeared on The BradCast just a few weeks ago) answered a whole bunch of questions basically disabusing the evidence-free claims about Smartmatic that have been forwarded for weeks on Dobbs' show and many others. Reportedly Jeanine Pirro's and Maria Bartiromo's Fox shows ran the exact same segment with Perez, using almost identical introductions. The segments then led straight to commercial without comment from the hosts.

Fox is clearly terrified, and should be. As the New York Times' Ben Smith reported over the weekend, Smartmatic has retained attorney "J. Erik Connolly, who not coincidentally won the largest settlement in the history of American media defamation in 2017, for at least $177 million."

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The madness continues on today's BradCast. But, midway through the show, SCOTUS put the unanimous brakes on the MAGA Mob's latest greatest hope to overturn the 2020 election, while top Republicans increase their eliminationist rhetoric to foment violence and Trump prepares to hand out pardons like Christmas candy.

A new survey out this week from Gallup finds a huge drop in the self-identified mental health of Americans. Not surprising. Perhaps also not surprising is that, among demographic groups which saw double-digit drops from their previous self-ratings of "excellent" mental health, Republicans and independents were near the top, while Democrats were among those groups identified with the smallest change in their own mental health ratings from previous surveys.

Not sure what that may mean exactly, but somehow it seems relevant today as the Republican Party appears to be mentally crumbling before our eyes as it begins to sink in for them that they've been lied to about Trump having "won" the 2020 election. Or even that they would somehow be able to come up with evidence --- any evidence --- that proves in court that Joe Biden and the Democrats and dead Hugo Chavez somehow stole it from Trump.

Last week, Trump Campaign lawyer and former U.S. Attorney, Joe diGenova, called for a former top DHS official, Chris Krebs, to be "taken out at dawn and shot" because he dared believe the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history." DiGenova and the Trump Campaign and Newsmax TV, the wingnut outlet which aired the Team Trump call to execute a former government official, all now face a serious lawsuit from Krebs.

Over at the old school wingnut outlet, Fox "News", formerly sane business anchor turned racist wingnut drama queen Lou Dobbs broke into a frothy rage while interviewing top White House advisor Stephen Miller because Trump and his party, as Dobbs sees it, aren't fighting hard enough to overthrow the election while "the Republican Party...is watching its blood drain into the streets because they're gutless."

And out in Arizona, where the very Trumpy Republican Governor Doug Ducey has been forced to repel entreaties by the President of the United State to stage a coup and declare the loser President to be the "winner" of the state's electoral votes, the state GOP, chaired by a loon named Kelli Ward, is asking Twitter followers to give their lives (literally) for Donald Trump. The AZ GOP even went so far as to follow up that request with a second tweet that includes a clip of "Rambo" holding an arrow to someone's head, while uttering: "This is what we do, who we are. Live for nothing, or die for something." That, in a state where a gun massacre was carried out in 2011 at a Democratic event that killed six and almost fatally wounded then Rep. Gabby Giffords whose husband, Mark Kelly, just unseated the state's Republican U.S. Senator on November 3rd.

All of that madness came before the U.S. Supreme Court today unanimously rejected the only case to come before the Court to challenge the 2020 Presidential election results. (The Trump Campaign has promised to go to SCOTUS themselves, but hasn't.) The rejected case was filed by U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) and several Pennsylvania state lawmakers challenging the new absentee ballot law that they passed (and voted for) last year as a violation of the state Constitution. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court already strongly rejected the challenge, and this afternoon, mid-show, SCOTUS refused to hear the attempted federal appeal.

But, if some 50 (and counting) failed, evidence-free court cases from Team Trump haven't yet done the trick, and they are unable to spark the violent new civil war they are clearly hoping for, Donald Trump is still busy preparing to give away pardons "like Christmas gifts" to his aides, friends, family and even himself while he still has the chance. As of today, such a pardon appears to have helped the admitted felon and former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn off the hook after he twice pleaded to lying to the FBI (while also admitting that he was an undeclared paid agent of Turkey.) So, in lieu of a violent upheaval --- or maybe along with it --- why not issue Presidential Pardons to all of your corrupt friends, family and business associates on the way out the door? Even before they've been charged with any crime? That appears to be coming very soon at this point.

To discuss the awesome, virtually unchallengeable Constitutional power of the Presidential Pardon, we are joined today again by former Asst. U.S. Attorney RANDALL D. ELIASON of George Washington University Law School. Several weeks ago, Eliason wrote an excellent primer on the scope and recent history (and abuse) of the Pardon power and the PardonPalooza that both he (and I) expect to see in the coming days.

Eliason challenges some of the common wisdom concerning Presidential Pardons (for example, whether it's true that someone who is pardoned loses their 5th Amendment right to refuse to testify about the criminal matter to Congress and law enforcement officials and whether or not a Pardon is actually an acknowledgement of "guilt"); whether Pardons may be legally challenged as corrupt or unlawfully self-dealing and, if so, how exactly; whether a President is Constitutionally allowed to pardon himself; and whether this one is likely to do so (answer in short: of course he is!)

As the news that U.S. Circuit Court Judge Emmet Sullivan dismissed the Michael Flynn case as "moot" just before airtime today, and the news that SCOTUS unanimously declined to take up the challenge to Pennsylvania's electors came during our discussion, we also get Eliason's reaction to both of those breaking matters.

Yes, it's another chocked-full-o-information BradCast, appropriately seasoned, we hope, with just enough snark along the way to help keep you both informed and sane! Good luck!...

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Everything and everybody seem to be on edge. It feels like we're near a breaking point. At home and abroad, as detailed throughout today's harrowing BradCast. [Audio link to full show is posted below summary.]

"It's all gone too far," Georgia's top voting systems chief made clear during powerful unscripted remarks at an emotional press conference on Tuesday night. "All of it!" Gabe Sterling's impassioned comments came after learning of new death threats against a young elections worker in his state. He is right to be infuriated. Things have now become damned dangerous thanks to our deranged President who seems to be turning more unhinged by the hour as his days in the White House wane.

We share an extended cut of the Republican Sterling's tirade today, as he called out both the Republican President and the state's two Republican Senators for failing to condemn the increasing hostility and threats against election officials in Georgia, as well those directed to its Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger. "Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence," Sterling implored the President. "Someone's gonna get hurt. Someone's gonna get shot. Someone's gonna get killled...All of this is wrong!"

Both of Georgia's U.S. Senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, face tough election re-election runoffs against Rafeael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively, on January 5. The contests will determine partisan control of the Senate. Both GOPers have decided to support Trump and his false claims about the state's election being stolen for Joe Biden with the aid, absurdly enough, of Kemp and Raffensperger. The President is currently scheduled to travel to the Peach State on Saturday to campaign with Loeffler and Perdue. We'll see if he makes it...and whether they both come to regret it.

It is, of course, insane that we find ourselves in support of Sterling, Raffensperger and Kemp, at least on these points. We have been vocally and justifiably critical of all three for a very long time on this program regarding the way they run elections in the state and undermine voter confidence in the bargain. But we'd never even consider the type of rhetoric that the President of the United States and his followers --- including Loeffler and Perdue --- are now using because Trump is too cowardly to concede that he lost and the two Senators are too cowardly to run without him.

None have any actual interest in cleaning up Georgia's elections. If they did, they'd have joined my weeks-old call to get the Dominion Voting Systems company out of the state entirely for the January elections by demanding hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots for all during the runoff. None of them, of course, have done so.

Rather than take Sterling's concerns to heart, Trump doubled down on Twitter thereafter to falsely declare a "Rigged Election" and "massive voter fraud in Georgia," charging the very Trumpy Governor Kemp is "afraid" of "what we'll find". And then, as released by the White House just before airtime, Trump delivered even more dangerously incendiary and deluded remarks in a fact-free 46-minute pre-taped video rant, asserting that "our election system is now under coordinated assault and siege."

But this is what is happening. And if all of it sounds insane, you'll be shocked to learn that top Trumpers, like his recently pardoned former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, are now literally calling for sedition by encouraging the President "to immediately declare a limited form of Martial Law and temporarily suspend the Constitution and civilian control of these federal elections for the sole purpose of having the military oversee a national re-vote."

Several weeks ago, I was uncertain about covering Trump's baseless claims of "massive fraud" in the election at all, back when he first began lying about all of this. Given where we are now, I'm glad we did. We all need to be informed about what is actually going on right now in this nation, no matter how twisted, and depressing, and damned dangerous it is now becoming.

But, for some "lighter" news today...We then turn to the recent assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and the latest fallout following both that, Trump's undermining and violation of the landmark Obama era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with Iran which had successfully blocked the Islamic Republican from the ability to create a nuclear weapon for at least ten years, and Trump's drone assassination earlier this year of Iran's revered General Qassam Soleimani. (Yes, that also took place in 2020!)

We're joined today for a great deal of insight on all of this --- as well as the history of targeting nuclear scientists, both in Iran in recent years and elsewhere since the dawn of the nuclear age, and whether the strategy actually works --- by someone who knows a great deal about all of it. WILLIAM TOBEY served on the White House National Security Council staff under three presidents, and as Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration from 2006-2009, where he managed the U.S. government's largest program to prevent nuclear proliferation and terrorism. He is now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and the Director of the U.S.-Russia Initiative to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism.

Among the many related topics discussed with Tobey today: How difficult it may be for the incoming Biden Administration to strike a new deal with Iran after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the JCPOA and the assassinations of both Soleimani and Fakhrizadeh, as Iran now vows both revenge and an increase in nuclear production; Whether the JCPOA, which Tobey was critical of, made us safer and why "we are in a more dangerous position today than we were in 2018"; And, why nations like North Korea and Iran justifiably see the development of nuclear weapons as an existential issue.

And with all of those pretty heavy topics, listeners who make it all the way to the end of today's BradCast may be richly rewarded with the concession speech that we all should have heard long ago...

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Hey, it's NICOLE SANDLER in for Brad and Desi today (they'll be back after the holiday weekend.) On today's BradCast, we're talking turkey. Okay, not really, but it is the day before Thanksgiving, and the lame duck yesterday pardoned a turkey named Corn. The big question is, what happened to the second turkey, Cob? What did Trump do with him? My guess is that Cob is tomorrow night's White House Thanksgiving dinner. Because that's how Trump rolls. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Yes, call me cynical. Actually just put a CY in front of Nicole, and you have cynicole. Perhaps it's spelled wrong, but the point is clear. Perhaps I'm the one who should have taken an early day off instead of filling in today for Brad & Desi so they could unwind. Oh well, it's all gravy now. (Sorry about that!)

Anyway, we started the show with lots of news, from our introduction to President-elect Biden's incoming national security nominees to today's breaking, though unsurprising news that Trump pardoned Michael Flynn, the man who TWICE pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and who was fired by Trump for lying to Mike Pence too. Maybe that was Trump's second Turkey pardon.

I checked in with ARI BERMAN who covers voting rights for Mother Jones, who engaged in a bit of a postmortem on the 2020 presidential elections.

Then it was time to talk treason. It's a term Trump throws around like a roll of paper towels in Puerto Rico. But I keep using it too, though only when talking about Trump. Because he is endangering American lives --- and 260,000 have already died due to his dereliction of duty and refusal to accept science over conspiracy theories --- I do believe Trump's behavior is treasonous. So I called on an expert.

Professor CARLTON F.W. LARSON teaches constitutional law and English and American history at UC/Davis, and just published his latest book, On Treason: A Citizen's Guide to the Law. When I asked if Trump's behavior was treasonous, he explained that treasonous behavior didn't necessarily mean "treason." Okay, I'm here to learn.

And with that, enjoy the show and have a Happy Thanksgiving...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

On today's BradCast: We make short work (for now) of several breaking news stories from over the weekend and into today. Then its straight on to our main story today, which you will hear nowhere else in the media. [Audio link to today's full show is posted below summary.]

In January, we broke the news here on The BRAD BLOG and The BradCast that Los Angeles County's brand-new, unverifiable, $300 million, 10-years-in-development touchscreen polling place voting system had failed to meet more than 40 different California Voting System Standards, according to independent certification testers hired by CA's Secretary of State Alex Padilla. Despite critical security issues that alarmed voting system and cybersecurity experts, the machines were nonetheless "conditionally certified" by Padilla just prior to the March 3rd Super Tuesday primary in the state. The new machines (known as Ballot Marking Devices or BMDs) and the electronic pollbooks that are required to work with them, both failed spectacularly. Voters were disenfranchised by the "Voting Solutions for All People" or VSAP system, as many across the nation's most populous voting jurisdiction were either turned away or forced to wait for hours in line to vote.

It was well after midnight before all of those still in line finally cast their votes on Super Tuesday. It was, of course, impossible to know if any of those votes were tallied as per any voter's intent, because BMD systems print out a computer-marked paper ballot which may or may not reflect the actual intent of any voter. It's impossible to know if results are accurate in any election that uses BMDs for the majority of voters. Recent studies [PDF] find that more than 90% of voters do not notice when a BMD has misprinted one or more of their votes on the paper printout.

After the March 3rd disaster in L.A. (which we had warned about long in advance, to little interest from media or public officials, even from the L.A. County Supervisors, much less Sec. Padilla) the system's brainchild, Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, was allowed a mulligan. He promised to fix what didn't work before the November election and told us all to simply trust him. Next time would be better. Many in the media then lost whatever interest they had as it was just weeks after Super Tuesday that COVID pandemic struck hard.

Well, now Padilla has recently posted the new certification testing results from Logan's mulligan, VSAP 2.1. The results do not inspire confidence, as many of the same problems with the system originally --- such as paper jams and misprinted QR Codes {PDF] --- still exist, according to testers. Now Padilla must decide in the next two weeks whether or not to certify them again. In truth, he has little choice as Early Voting is now just weeks away. While the state's decision to send every active voter a Vote-by-Mail ballot may help to ease many of the potential log jams at the county's new Voting Centers, ballots cast on the new systems --- as opposed to verifiable hand-marked paper absentee ballots --- are still vulnerable to manipulation and can never been known to reflect voter intent after the polls close.

However, there are some things that Padilla could require to be done to mitigate some of the worst dangers of the system if it is to be used for this year's critical November election. Several dozen election integrity and activist groups, along with a number of esteemed cybersecurity and voting systems experts, recently signed on to an excellent public letter led by the California Clean Money Campaign, demanding Padilla implement a number of the mitigations before certifying the updated voting systems.

We're joined today by LULU FRIESDAT, co-founder of SmartElections.us and ROBIN GIBSON, longtime Los Angeles Election Integrity advocate, to discuss those potential mitigations and the one-and-only public comments hearing held today online before Padilla's pending decision to certify. They report that Padilla did not bother to attend, though Logan, apparently, came by near the end of the session to claim that everything is now working fine. "Our registrar got on the call and dismissed two hours of worried voters, and said he had tests that said it was fine," Gibson explained. "It was like 'I win, nah, nah, nah.'"

As Friesdat and Gibson explain, the citizen advocates and experts are asking in their letter for the ballot boxes attached to each touchscreen tablet system to be removed, so that the computer-printed ballots don't have to pass back through the same printer heads after they've been (theoretically) verified by each voter. Experts warn [PDF] that sending the ballot back through the same printer path after verification is a major security risk, allowing the system to change voters votes, without their knowledge, after they have supposedly already approved their printed ballot. Instead, the group is urging that the attached ballot boxes be removed, and that ballots be deposited manually by voters into a separate ballot box at the polling place, for tabulation later.

The group is also asking Padilla to do away with the unverifiable QR Codes that are printed on each ballot. It is that code --- which can't be verified as accurate by any voter --- that is actually read by the optical-scan computer tabulators to tallly each ballot, rather than the human-readable text print out that voters may or may not have verified! "It is not secure to have the vote encoded in a QR code," Friesdat joins cybsersecurity experts in warning.

Moreover, the groups are calling for real, hand-marked paper ballots to be made available to any and all voters at Voting Centers for voters smart enough to want to cast a verifiable vote. "This is basic," Friesdat insists. "Hand-marked paper ballots are the gold standard that security experts recommend. It's not hard to provide them, and voters should be encouraged to use hand-marked paper ballots if they're able to mark by hand."

They also uge Padilla and Logan to finally release the source code to this supposedly County-owned and developed system. The money appropriated by tax-payers was done on the basis, advanced by both Padilla and Logan, that it would be a fully "open source" system, 100% publicly owned. All of that is also important because elections officials in other states and counties across the country have expressed interest in adopting this exact system if it ever actually works in L.A.

Friesdat and Gibson detail many of their own concerns, as well as others who offered public comment today before we open up the phone lines to listener questions about this terrible new system, just 64 days before Election Day and mere weeks before early voting is set to begin in Los Angeles County...

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On today's BradCast, the grifts continue --- huge new ones that few yet know about --- but too many are focused on Donald Trump's latest distractions to notice. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up today: Please stop taking Trump's bait. His tweet on Thursday suggesting the postponement of the November election was little more than an attempt to distract from the day's very real news, including the horrific numbers from the Commerce Department (finding that the U.S. economy had plunged a record, unprecedented, staggering annualized 33% in the second quarter.). It worked. Media fell for it, and so did you, even though the President of the United States has no power to change the date of the Presidential election. The tweet not only helped to flip the entire day's news cycle, it also further terrorized the nation and helped to reinforce his desperate narrative that the 2020 election will be "the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history."

Democrats need to stop cowering in fear at Trump's wannabe dictatorial pronouncements. As Josh Marshall correctly wrote in response, "I understand everyone is afraid. But this is loser talk." The anti-Trump Republicans at the Lincoln Project ain't buying it. And the co-founder of the far-right Federalist Society has called for Trump's immediate impeachment because of it. Media need to learn to stop allowing Trump to hijack the news cycle and Americans need to learn to stop cowering in fear of Trump, despite his only actual talent: masterfully tricking both you and the media into falling for his pathetic manipulation.

Next up, the powerful Republican Speaker of the House, Larry Householder, who was arrested and charged last week by federal prosecutors in a massive, $60 million bribery, money laundering and racketeering scheme, has now been removed from the Speaker position in a unanimous bipartisan vote of the Buckeye State's House of Representatives. Householder and four others (including a senior aide, a former state GOP chair, and two top energy industry lobbyists) were charged in a racketeering scheme funded by FirstEnergy. The scheme was used to force a wildly unpopular bill through the state legislature last year that raised electricity bills on Ohio ratepayers to bail out two failing, hyper-polluting coal plants and two failing nuclear plants, while gutting the state's successful renewable energy and efficiency programs.

Despite the felony charges and lost speakership, Householder has yet to resign, the corrupt $1.5 billion House Bill 6 is still on the books, and Ohio's Republican Governor, Mike DeWine, who quickly signed the measure, still has some explaining to do. But while that scheme, described by federal prosecutors last week as the "the largest bribery, money laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio," allegedly netted Householder some $60 million in bribes from FirstEnergy, laundered through a non-profit front group, it may pale in comparison to what one good government group now charges the Trump reelection campaign is doing.

Earlier this week, the non-partisan watchdog Campaign Legal Center (CLC), headed up by a former Republican Chair of the Federal Elections Commission, filed a new complaint with the FEC charging that the Trump Campaign and a joint fundraising committee is violating federal law by "laundering" nearly $170 million in campaign spending through firms headed up by Trump's former campaign manager, Brad Parscale (pictured above). The money, according to my guest today, CLC's Director of Federal Reform, BRENDAN FISCHER, is secretly being funneled to Trump associates and even family members.

"We've never seen anything like this. The scope and scale of this secrecy scheme is unprecedented," Fischer says, explaining how tens of millions of dollars in campaign ad buys and other large campaign expenses are all being run through two companies created by Parscale. One is called American Made Media and the other is Parscale Strategies. The campaign has claimed the companies are being used to save money by cutting out middle-man vendors, but CLC has discovered that the companies are being used as pass-throughs, and that sub-contracted vendors are making ad buys on behalf of the Trump Campaign anyway. Moreover, those vendors are not being disclosed, as required by campaign finance law, on the Campaign's financial disclosure forms. That, as Fischer tells me, means that payments are being hidden for campaign work, including potentially millions of dollars siphoned to groups with whom it is unlawful for the Campaign to coordinate efforts, and even to Trump associates and family members like Lara Trump (Eric Trump's wife) and former Fox "News" host Kimberly Guilfoyle (Donald Trump Jr.'s girlfriend).

"These two Parscale firms are being used only as pass-throughs to disguise the ultimate recipients of the money," Fischer and the CLC complaint alleging civil violations of campaign finance laws charge. "If the Trump Campaign gets away with this, it's just going to become a common practice. It's going to get replicated by campaigns, both Democrat and Republican, to disguise all of their political spending," he warns, adding that "if there was evidence that the violation was knowing and willful, there potentially could be criminal penalties."

Fischer offers many more details on what CLC knows and, due to the purposeful obfuscation through campaign finance records, what they still don't know, but hope that FEC investigators will be able to find out. We also discuss the dysfunction of the impossibly broken FEC and how that may affect action on this new and very serious complaint.

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen for our latest Green News Report on Trump's visit to Texas to help sell dirty oil while undermining the state's growing wind industry and lying about Joe Biden. Also, we cover the latest storm now barreling towards Florida as this year's record Hurricane Season continues and those "mystery seeds" that many are reporting as showing up in the mail from China...

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Last Wednesday, the mainstream media paid scant attention to the damning testimony provided to the House Judiciary Committee by John W. Elias, a career attorney at the Department of Justice (DOJ). Elias revealed astonishing details on the corrupt manner in which Attorney General William Barr and the "political leadership" of the DOJ's Antitrust Division abused our antitrust laws; corruptly ordering career staff to open unwarranted but burdensome, politically-motivated antitrust investigations.

It's not that Elias' testimony was unimportant. His words were simply drowned out by the testimony provided by other witnesses about other Barr/DOJ misconduct, and by a separate, but related event. The combined effect of the other testimony provided to the the Judiciary panel and the separate news event was nothing short of jaw-dropping.

Still, Elias' previously unthinkable allegations were, in fact, no less so...

Given the disturbing news out of a D.C. Appeals Court today in the Michael Flynn case, we begin today's BradCast with a few words of warning about what is likely to come between now and November 3rd (and even beyond), and how we all must now collectively approach that day in order to save this Republic. This is not a test. This is the real thing. And, as our darkest hour gets darker still --- and it will --- we must stay focused on the only thing that offers hope right now, the only thing that matters: making very real changes at the White House and Congress this November.

After that serious-as-a-heart-attack public service announcement/warning, we break down just why the surprise ruling by two Republican appointees to the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. today --- in response to an unprecedented motion by Donald Trump's former National Security Advisor and confessed federal felon Michael Flynn --- is so damning, dangerous and unprecedented.

The three-judge panel's majority ruling [PDF], ordering Flynn's case to be dismissed --- as Trump demanded and as corrupt Attorney General Bill Barr facilitated in opposition to the career prosecutors who successfully obtained Flynn's guilty plea (twice, before two different judges) --- was written by Judge Neomi Rao, a former White House staffer who Trump recently appointed as a federal appeals court judge. The entire matter is about as corrupt as it can get, but it may not be over yet. The full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals may decide to rehear Flynn's unprecedented motion, given "the question of exceptional importance" raised by the matter, as allowed by law. The lower U.S. District Court was not even allowed to hold a hearing on the Dept. of Justice's Motion to Dismiss their own case before Flynn filed for a writ of mandamus to force U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan to approve the DoJ's motion before it was even heard.

As Judge Robert Wilkins, the lone Democratic-appointed judge on the three-judge appellate panel wrote in his dissent, his colleagues "grievously" overstepped their judicial powers with their order. If the surprising ruling holds, it will, as BRAD BLOG legal analyst Ernie Canning wrote last week, mean that the court has become "complicit in the President's corruption of the rule of law," which is "tantamount to an abandonment of the Judiciary's constitutional function to act as a check against Executive Branch abuses of power."

At the same time as that stunning order was issued by the D.C. Court of Appeals panel, two DoJ whistleblowers were testifying about similar cases of corruption at the Department by senior political appointees working at the behest of Barr and Trump in the case of Roger Stone, another Trump crony found guilty of lying to federal officials (just as Flynn had admitted he did as well) in relation to the Robert Mueller Special Counsel probe into Russian inference in the 2016 election. We share some of today's disturbing testimony by Aaron Zelinsky, one of the career prosecutors who refused to sign off on the DoJ's attempt to reduce the sentencing recommendation for Stone, Trump's pal and longtime dirty-tricksters (found guilty here on all seven counts), despite what he described as "heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice," including senior political appointees who, he alleged, were "afraid of the President."

"It’s very important that we recognize what’s happening now," warned Donald Ayer, another witness at today's hearing and a former Deputy Attorney General under George W. Bush. "What’s happening now is much worse than what happened in Watergate --- much worse. It’s across-the-board. It’s a systematic effort to undo the checks that were put in place in Watergate and others that existed in the Constitution. And we need to do something about it."

The corruption of the Flynn and Stone prosecutions are now so far off the rails from what the U.S. Department of Justice is supposed to stand for that it is difficult to fully express how much dark trouble this now portends for our nation. Thus, we have one hope left --- our last firewall against full-blown authoritarianism in this country --- this year's critical general elections. To that end, there were primaries held on Tuesday in Kentucky, New York and Virginia along with a few other key races elsewhere. We're joined today by longtime progressive political blogger and Congressional campaign expert HOWIE KLEIN of Down With Tyranny to discuss a number of election results from Tuesday in New York and Kentucky which appear to suggest some very good news for progressives. We say "appear" because several of those elections are currently reported to be very close and, due to the coronavirus (which had its single biggest day of new infections in the U.S. on Wednesday), it will take some time for officials to tally the unprecedented number of absentee mail-in ballots cast. We run through several of the key races with Klein (he details many more here today) why they matter, and how a number of them they are likely to scare the hell out of the establishment on both the Left and Right.

"There were wins and losses," Klein tells me. "It wasn't like the progressives wiped out the [Democratic] conservatives. But thank goodness it didn't go the other way. So yes, it was a good night for progressive Democrats."

Also worth a quick mention today: The 24-year old Republican dude named Madison Cawthorn, who defeated the Trump-endorsed candidate in the GOP runoff to become the nominee to fill former Congressman turned White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows' seat in North Carolina. And ALL of the electronic pollbooks in Virginia Beach, Virginia's 100 precincts failed on Tuesday...

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This is about far more than the fate of Michael Flynn.

Last week, in an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief [PDF], former federal prosecutor John Gleeson, a retired federal judge, together with a number of renowned attorneys and constitutional scholars, offered a scathing condemnation of the William Barr-led Department of Justice. Gleeson denounced the DOJ's "corrupt" and "politically motivated" effort to dismiss the long-running case against Flynn, Donald Trump's former National Security Advisor, who, the brief describes as a "political ally of the President."

The issue at stake in this case is not only on a matter of accountability for Trump's disgraced former National Security Advisor. It also entails a question of whether the corrupt political influence the President has exerted over an ethically compromised Attorney General will now flow into and compromise a co-equal branch of government, the federal Judiciary...

On today's BradCast, the gaslighting of the nation continues, from Flynn to Florida. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Two weeks ago, U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr's Dept. of Justice stunned the legal world by filing a motion to drop all charges against Lt. General Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's first National Security Advisor and one of his earliest supporters. Flynn had twice pleaded guilty before three different judges about lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador before Trump's inauguration. His guilty plea also included the admission that he was a paid agent for the nation of Turkey, which he failed to disclose even as he received highly classified briefings after Trump's election before going on to serve as the nation's top national security official in the White House.

Flynn initially lied to FBI officials in January of 2017 and was recently set to receive his sentencing in federal court when his new Fox "News" lawyers convinced him to try and withdraw his guilty plea. Before U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan was able to decide on that matter, Barr, Trump's new fixer, jumped in to try to make the prosecution go away completely, claiming that the initial interview during which Flynn lied to federal officials about his conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, should never have happened in the first place. Barr argues the counterintelligence probe being carried out by the FBI at the time, looking into Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 campaign and potential cooperation by the Trump Campaign, should also have never happened in the first place.

The problem is Barr's own DoJ --- just a few months ago, at the beginning of this year, in their sentencing recommendation memo [PDF] for Flynn --- argued the 2017 interview was "material to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation to know the full extent of the defendant’s communications with the Russian Ambassador, and why he lied to the FBI about those communications." They called Flynn's false statements to the FBI "significant" and potential "evidence of links or coordination between the Trump Campaign and Russia."

Week's later, in the May 7 motion to dismiss the charges [PDF] against Flynn --- which all of the career prosecutors who worked on the case for years refused to sign --- Barr's DoJ claimed the exact opposite, that the January 2017 interview with Flynn was not "conducted with a legitimate investigative basis." Barr himself, during an interview with a former Fox "News" reporter explaining the unprecedented filing, argued that the FBI "did not have a legitimate basis for a counterintelligence investigation against Flynn."

But Barr's DoJ argued the opposite case only weeks earlier and offered few details in the new filing about why they are now, suddenly, changing their legal position. Judge Sullivan is none to happy about any of it and has retained a retired prosecutor/federal judge to argue against the new filing now that the DoJ has literally joined forces with the Flynn defense team they were previously prosecuting.

The argument, as national security journalist MARCY WHEELER of Empty Wheel recently reported, is now between the Barr DoJ's two different and conflicting positions on the matter and, she explains, should be covered as such by the corporate media seeking to "both sides" every issue.

Wheeler joins us today to explain the extraordinary, unprecedented mess, and how it is that Barr and his DoJ now find themselves, literally, on both sides of the issue, as the nation's top law enforcement official continues his partisan bidding for the President of the United States. "You can't, as the same party," says Wheeler, "stand before a court and say, 'I think 2 plus 2 is 4 and then the next day come in and say, 'I think 2 plus 2 is 17.' That's effectively what DoJ has done, given that Bill Barr's DoJ said in January this was material to a serious and legitimate investigation, and now he's saying this was not material because the investigation was not legitimate."

She also discusses whether the media are falling for Barr's bogus claims; whether Barr and the DoJ could, themselves, be sanctioned by Judge Sullivan; and whether Sullivan's new hire, Judge John Gleeson, may argue that Flynn, in this case, should be charged with contempt for his perjurious lies to the court.

Then, as Barr tries to gaslight the nation, the state of Florida, under the command of GOP Governor and Trump pal Ron DeSantis, is apparently trying to do the same amid the coronavirus pandemic. A new report from Florida Today finds that the state's lead Department of Health official who headed up the creation of Florida's highly lauded COVID-19 dashboard website, was recently removed from the job after refusing to censor key scientific data on coronavirus cases, spread and deaths in the Sunshine State while DeSantis is risking lives by "reopening" the economy there faster than health experts recommend.

The way in which Republicans are trying to deny, ignore and otherwise hide scientific data in favor of promoting the economy at all costs, as we discuss, is a perfect hyper-speed analog of how the same political party has attempted to deny, ignore and otherwise hide the science of climate change in favor of the economy, no matter the expense to the public and the death toll that folly similarly entails.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins for the latest Green News Report with more lessons we should learn from the COVID crisis about the climate crisis; news on the massive, climate change-fueled cyclone about to slam into one of the poorest regions on earth in the middle of the pandemic; and the Trump EPA's approval of rocket-fuel toxins in your drinking water...

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It's another one of those days on The BradCast when we've got more news than we can adequately handle. On the upside, much of it is actually encouraging news for a happy change! At least for those of us who have yet to give up on the idea of accountability for corrupt, very very bad people. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

Among the news covered on today's program...

• The FBI served a warrant on Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) Wednesday night, seizing his cell phone as part of an investigation into a huge number of stocks he unloaded on a single day before the stock market crashed on bad coronavirus news which he received early as the Chair of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Committee overseeing health care issues. On Thursday, amid what appears to be a very serious scandal, Burr "temporarily" stepped down as head of the bipartisan Intel Committee. But there may be much more behind this otherwise seemingly good news of a Republican Senator actually being held accountable for something. We discuss;

• The federal judge overseeing the case against Donald Trump's first National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is not taking the DoJ's unprecedented recent motion to dismiss all charges against him at face value. Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to lying to FBI officials about his contacts with Russians before Trump's inauguration and about secretly serving as a Turkish agent even while serving as National Security Advisor in the White House may not yet be off the hook. That, even after Trump's corrupt AG/fixer Bill Barr is attempting to toss two years of DoJ prosecution, without the approval of the actual DoJ career prosecutors, in hopes of keeping Trump's pal out of jail. The federal judge on the case has appointed a bulldog former prosecutor and federal judge to argue against the DoJ's new position after Barr merged it with that of Flynn's Defense team. Judge Emmet Sullivan has also asked the newly retained Judge John Gleeson to investigate whether Flynn committed perjury by lying to the court when he twice admitted lying to federal officials;

• Still more encouraging accountability news came out of a federal appeals court in Virginia today, with the Fourth Circuit reversing a ruling from a three-judge panel (of Republican-appointed judges) last year. The full en banc panel held, in a 9 to 6 ruling, that the smaller group of judges had wrongly dismissed a Constitutional Emoluments Clause lawsuit filed against Trump. The complaint was brought by the Attorneys General of Maryland and D.C., arguing that Trump's hotel in the nation's capital --- now a favorite spot of world diplomats and others seeking favor from the Administration --- violates the Constitutional prohibition against President's receiving "any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any king, prince, or foreign state" or any state in the U.S. Naturally, the DoJ is now vowing to appeal to the Republicans' stolen U.S. Supreme Court;

From all of that (potentially) encouraging accountability news, we move on to....the economy and DAVID DAYEN of The American Prospect. First, new jobless numbers from the Labor Department once again highlight the crushing toll that the COVID-19 crisis is taking on the nation's economy, with nearly 3 million having filed for unemployment last week. We have now seen two straight months of unprecedented new weekly jobless claims from 3 to 6.5 million each and every week. The previous weekly record, before this crisis, was less than one million. The official unemployment rate soared to 14.7% in April, the highest since the Great Depression, after more than 20 million jobs --- a decade's worth or job growth --- simply vanished over the past two months. Economist believe the actual unemployment rate, including those not currently looking for work or who are still unable to access overburdened state facilities to apply for unemployment --- is closer to 24%. At the same time, a new Kaiser Family Foundation report estimates that 27 million Americans have lost their employer-based health insurance due to the crisis, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell is calling for much more money to be appropriated by Congress to "avoid long-term economic damage". That, even after Congress already appropriated a record $2 trillion in stimulus and relief packages and the Fed itself has committed nearly $4 trillion to shore up companies and, in theory, the economy.

Dayen, an author and investigative financial journalist, has been documenting the stumbling Congressional responses to the crisis in his daily "Unsanitized" column and newsletter, and explains how the massive unemployment numbers we are now seeing was largely by Congressional design. He also details the state of play today for the next Congressional relief package, including a mini uprising from progressives on Nancy Pelosi's Democratic side in the House and the complete inaction on the Republican side from Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Trump in the White House. Dayen details the "laundry list of ideas" included in Pelosi's $3 trilion Heroes Act, which may come up for a vote on Friday in the House, though is unlikely to get much further as is, and a disturbing provision in the measure that would actually serve as a bailout for lobbyists and dark money groups. We debate whether that would be a good or bad idea and exactly why. (David calls it "insane", I'm not quite as certain...)

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On today's BradCast: Yes, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, committed voter fraud while serving as President of the United States. And, speaking of elections, we had a few on Tuesday in California, Wisconsin and Nebraska. [Audio link to full show is conveniently posted below.]

But first up today, if Trump is accusing someone else of doing something, it's a near certainty it's because he's doing it himself. While he's been busy pretending in recent weeks that Democrats steal elections by absentee voting, it turns out it was Trump himself who actually committed voter fraud in the state of Florida this year when he voted in the Sunshine State's primary election in March by absentee ballot. No, voting by absentee is not a crime or fraud in and of itself (as he continues to claim). But voting in the state of Florida --- in-person or via absentee --- without having a lawful permanent domicile there is, in fact, a felony.

As Washington Post recently documented, thanks to some digging by attorneys, historians and neighbors of Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club, Trump signed an agreement in 1993 that turned Mar-a-Lago from a single family residence into a commercial club. It cannot be both at the same time under state law, despite Trump's recent assertion on a Palm Beach application for approval of a boat dock at his seaside club that the club was his "personal residence".

As the facts started coming out that Trump's claim to have moved his residence from New York to Florida last year was, in fact, unlawful, he quietly rescinded the application for a new dock this week. But he can't rescind the fact that he committed voter fraud in the state of Florida by falsely claiming residency there and then voting unlawfully in their March primary elections. If it was anyone else (any Democrat, anyway), charges would be brought. But, like former GOP superstar Ann Coulter, who also blatantly and knowingly committed voter fraud in Palm Beach, Florida (as The BRAD BLOG meticulously and indisputably documented years ago), Trump will probably find a way to eventually get off the hook for his voter fraud crimes as well. He shouldn't. Even if that means waiting until he's out of office to bring criminal charges against him. Republicans have jailed, fined, deported and otherwise thrown the book at others for far lesser election-related crimes in recent years.

That, as Trump is claiming a bogus (if unspecified) crime by former President Obama that he and Fox "News" have now dubbed "OBAMAGATE" in apparent hopes of tarring Trump's presumptive Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, somehow. The pretend scandal seemly has something to do with Trump's former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty in federal court to lying to federal officials about his contact with Russian agents prior to Trump's inauguration and about being an undeclared agent of Turkey even while serving as National Security Advisor. But, despite Trump describing "OBAMAGATE" as the "biggest political crime in American history, by far!," so big, in fact, that it "makes Watergate look small time", neither the President nor Fox "News" seem to be able to explain either what the crime is, or why Trump says that his own Constitutional powers as President allow him to commit any crime he wants, while that same Constitution didn't apply to President Obama apparently (even as there is no evidence to demonstrate that Obama committed any such crime.) It was, however, quite amusing when a guest on Fox "News" recently pointed out that little problem with Trump's otherwise ingenious plan.

Then, we're joined by longtime, champion progressive blogger HOWIE KLEIN of Down With Tyranny to discuss Tuesday's Special Elections for the U.S. House in California and Wisconsin and a big win for progressives in Omaha during yesterday's primary elections in Nebraska. Progressive Democrat Kara Eastman trounced former Republican Ann Ashford, wife of former conservative Democratic Rep. Brad Ashford, to win the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District. Eastman will run against hard right Republican Trump loyalist Donald Bacon in November, after the incumbent Congressman defeated her by about 2 points in 2018. Klein argues that it sometimes takes a couple runs at it before progressive candidates are able to unseat incumbents. He believes Eastman, a strong supporter of a Medicare for All single-payer universal health care system, has a very good shot at flipping the seat from red to blue this year, fueled by the populist progressive grassroots support that lead to her landslide win on Tuesday

Meanwhile, the news was not as good for Democrats in the two U.S. House Special Elections yesterday. In Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District (so gerrymandered by Republicans that it stretches across 26 different rural counties!), Republican Tom Tiffany easily defeated Democrat Tricia Zunker by about 15 points. As Klein tells me, however, she did better than Clinton in that district, which went for Obama in 2008, Romney in 2012 and to Trump by about 20 points in 2016.

The most stinging loss of the night for Dems had to be in California's 25th Congressional District, where establishment-backed Democratic candidate Christy Smith appears to have lost to Republican Mike Garcia by about 12 points (at least with 82% of ballots now tabulated). This is the seat vacated late last year by freshman Democratic Rep. Katie Hill, who resigned amid a revenge porn and ethics scandal. Klein explains how and why the Democrats lost on Tuesday, and blames much of it on a lack of support --- and, at times, opposition --- from the conservative Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). That election, by the way, is the one that Trump and Republicans were pretending over the weekend was being "stolen by Democrats!"

As co-founder of the BlueAmericaPAC with Heather Digby Parton of Hullabaloo and John Amato of Crooks and Liars, Klein also details several progressive U.S. House candidates today who could use your support in upcoming primaries around the country. Several of them are facing contests with incumbent establishment Democrats over the next two months as nearly 20 different states have yet to hold their primary elections this year...

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It's NICOLE SANDLER back again to guest-host today's edition of the BradCast. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

It's a crazy time in American history as, under the background of a global pandemic for which there is no cure, vaccine or treatment, we have an out-of-control President who hasn't got a clue how to handle the economic meltdown we're experiencing. So I called on my favorite expert to talk all things economic-- STEPHANIE KELTON! With all indicators showing that we've entered depression territory, the time is ripe for her forthcoming book, The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the Peoples Economy.

And we have an out-of-control U.S. Attorney General in Bill Barr who last week moved to dismiss the charges against Trump's former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn --- charges to which he'd already pleaded guilty! I couldn't think of a better guest to call on than LISA GRAVES, who rose to Deputy Assistant Attorney General under Janet Reno in the Clinton administration, and is one of 2000 former DOJ officials signing on to a letter today asking Barr to resign...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

Donald Trump is putting George Orwell to shame. A Republican U.S. Congressman is caught on tape committing election fraud. And our Green News Report may have finally jumped the shark --- or at least the news we report in it today has. All on today's BradCast. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

I've said many times on the show that Donald Trump and the Republicans can't simply lie this one away. Or vote it away. Or simply ignore it. The hard numbers of Americans dying --- at least 75,000 already --- can't merely be wished away, as Trump has successfully been able to do with so many of his crimes, misdemeanors, appalling failures as President and other scandals. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe they can actually pretend it all away. In fact, that is now what they are trying to do.

In Arizona, some two dozen experts at two top universities who had been compiling the state's most robust public modeling for COVID-19 were told by the head of the state's Department of Health Services to stop their work immediately, according to an email obtained by Phoenix' ABC affiliates and reported by the Arizona Republic on Wednesday. They will also no longer have access to special data sets the team had employed in their work. The order came as AZ's Republican Governor Doug Ducey was lifting coronavirus restrictions across the state, and after the experts from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona produced five different potential models for reopening the state, with only one scenario that did not show a dramatic increase in cases. That one allowed for businesses to reopen at the end of May. But Ducey wants them open now, so his Health Department has shut down the state's best information in favor of models they claim are coming from FEMA and the CDC --- moels that have no been released publicly.

Back in D.C., the President of the United States is now reportedly questioning the coronavirus death toll numbers, believing them to be lower than reported, according to AXIOS, when, in fact, it is almost universally agreed among experts that the most widely reported numbers from Johns Hopkins University are likely vastly lower than the actual death toll, since most states have only reported those who have died after testing positive for COVID. Tens of thousands of more Americans have died over the past several months almost certainly from the virus, but they are not currently included in those figures. Nonetheless, Trump and other senior aides are now planning to publicly question the death toll as being falsely inflated, while the tragic numbers continue to blow away Trump's repeated lies since January about expected U.S. deaths from the pandemic. Yes, he's preparing to simply pretend it all away, as he did with the death toll for Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and as Republicans have done for years regarding the science of climate change.

At the same time, as AP revealed today, the Administration is also preventing the release of a 17-page CDC guidance report meant to help local churches, restaurants, schools, summer camps, transit systems and other business reopen safely, with one CDC source telling AP they were told the guidance "would never see the light of day." After the publication of the report by the AP documenting the Administration's attempt to bury it, the New York Times reports the White House "rejected the recommendations over concerns that they were overly prescriptive, infringed on religious rights and risked further damaging an economy that Mr. Trump was banking on to recover quickly." In other words, Trump believes he can revive the economy quickly to improve his re-election chances, no matter how many Americans are unnecessarily killed in service to that cause.

And, speaking of elections, the Denver Post published a remarkable story on Wednesday night, along with an audio recording revealing Colorado U.S. Congressman and state Republican Party Chair Ken Buck ordering another GOP party official to falsify election results on an affidavit in order to place a Republican candidate for state Senate on Colorado's upcoming primary ballot.

The Republican official, Eli Bremer, GOP chair of state Senate District 10, is heard on the call refusing to do so without consulting with an attorney first. He asserts that he was being asked by Buck to commit a crime in signing a false affidavit to certify that at a local candidate received the 30% support necessary to be placed on the ballot when, in fact, he received only 24% in a recent vote.

A state District Court judge ruled on Monday that Bremer would have, in fact, been in violation of state law had he signed the affidavit as ordered by Buck. The state Republican Party appealed the ruling to the Colorado Supreme Court which declined to hear the case, leaving the lower court's ruling in place. Buck, a Tea Party right-winger and former District Attorney, claims the initial vote was flawed. He has yet to resign his post as Colorado GOP Chair or U.S. Congressman. He should step down from both. Had any Democrat been caught on tape doing anything even close to what Buck is heard doing in the recording, they would already be gone. We'll hope the Colorado state Bar Association, at the very least, sees fit to take away Buck's license to practice law after being caught on tape repeatedly ordering someone else to violate it.

Finally, even with what may be our most ridiculously apocalyptic Green News Report ever today, we have to tack on one more sign of the end of the world, as a potentially historic snowstorm is now forecast to dump as much as one foot this weekend in parts of the Northeast and New England --- in MAY! That story seems an apt intro today for Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report today, in which it all falls apart --- including terrible climate crisis news and, yes, Murder Hornets! --- suggesting that, in fact, we may finally have reached 'Peak GNR'.

Enjoy! (If you dare...)

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