Okay. Lots of crime and corruption by the President of the United States and his criminal henchman and women on today’s BradCast. The good news, however, is that most of it falling apart on him, because he’s not even good at criming. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
Most noteworthy among our coverage today…
- As Donald Trump threatens a distraction war of regime change against Venezuela, two human rights organizations released a damning report last week finding that more than 250 Venezuelan detainees that Trump shipped to the CECOT gulag in El Salvador earlier this year were subjected to “systematic and prolonged torture and abuse”. That, despite the fact that just 3% of those disappeared to the known torture prison by the Administration had been convicted of any violent crime in the U.S.
- Trump’s corrupt indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James are absolutely falling apart in court before several different judges and different pretrial motions. Attorney KEITH BARBER (who writes at Daily Kos as “Keith DB”) is here to help us break down a remarkable 24-page ruling (PDF) issued today by a federal magistrate judge in the Comey case.
After reviewing the grand jury transcript in chambers, Judge William Fitzpatrick determined that Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s former insurance lawyer turned unlawfully-seated U.S. Attorney in Virginia, engaged in a “disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps” that appear to have violated Comey’s rights in numerous ways.
Among those rights violation, as Barber details, Halligan’s apparent instructions to grand jurors that Comey’s refusal to testify before them could be used to infer his guilt. That’s a “clear violation of Comey’s 5th Amendment rights,” explained Barber in a posting at DailyKos today. Comey’s rights were also violated, according to the judge, when the grand jury was instructed by Halligan that they didn’t need to rely on the record presented to them. Rather, they could infer that the government had far better evidence to be presented later at trial.
Not unlike the judge who wrote that those two instructions alone were “fundamental misstatements of law that could compromise the integrity of the grand jury process,” Barber was flabbergasted.
“It’s unprecedented. That is one of those things that is like ‘Prosecutor 101’, which, of course, Halligan never took,” he tells me. “I honestly can’t believe she’s that dumb, but she certainly acted that way. Normally the most faint whiff by a prosecutor before a jury — including a grand jury — that suggests that a defendant’s unwillingness to testify imputes guilt is sufficient to result in a mistrial or dismissal of charges. That alone, by itself, should end the day for this.”
But there was much more from both the judge in this matter — who has taken the extraordinary step of turning over the grand jury transcript to the defendants, as we discuss — and from a separate federal judge who heard a separate pre-trial challenge last week, as combined from both Comey and James, regarding Halligan’s apparently unlawful seating as U.S. Attorney.
“This case will never get to trial,” says Barber, regarding the Comey case. “If it doesn’t get dismissed for this reason — the misconduct before the grand jury — then one of the others will kill it or the cumulative weight of all of these irregularities are going to cause the judge to toss it.”
“There’s stupid, and there’s corrupt,” he quips. “And then there’s stupidly corrupt. It’s just ridiculous.”
- Next… in a Sunday night social media posting, Trump appeared to flip-flop on his statement from just last week describing any Republican who would vote to release the Epstein Files as “stupid”. In his Sunday post, however, Trump called on Congressional Republicans to vote in favor of pending legislation to release the Epstein Files. The legislation is likely to finally receive a vote in the House this week, that calls on the DOJ to release “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in DOJ’s possession that relate to the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein.”
But, don’t be fooled by Trump’s seeming reversal, for at least two reasons. 1) Trump could order the release of those files today if he actually wanted them released. He doesn’t need legislation to force him to do so. And 2) the legislation would allow the DOJ to withhold “materials that would jeopardize an active federal investigation.” While corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi announced several months ago that there were no more loose ends and nothing more to investigate in the Epstein matter following the jailhouse death of the child sex offender and longtime close friend of Trump, she announced last week that she was opening a new investigation last week into Democrats alleged to have been involved with Epstein. That announcement followed a public request from Trump for such a probe just one day earlier. So, yeah, vote to release the files if you like, but you can probably assume that anything that might incriminate Trump will be withheld so as not to “jeopardize an active federal investigation.”
- Then, we open the phone lines to callers on what they think about the Trump/Epstein mess and whether they believe those files will ever see the light of day as long as Trump has the power to continue covering them up…
Perhaps is should be spelled Kaliedoscope ?
One wonders, or should wonder, when the state evidence that was used in the state prosecution of Epstein will come into the consciousness of all the “intensely serious” folks who want a look at Epstein whodunnit matters.
Epstein pled guilty to those state crimes.
The realm of federal officialdom (Trump’s congress, Trump’s courts, and Trumps administration) has no say in the release of those documents.
The whodunnitosphere needs to go after those documents.
Perhaps it should be spelled Kaliedoscope ?