Corruption, Sleaze, Skullduggery, Deep Fakes, the Swamp, and Treason

[ccp]

https://spectator.org/trump-is-the-man-nixon-couldnt-be/

[Crafty_Dog]

That was really good!

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2024/02/13/white-house-dropped-key-venezuelan-sanctions-after-pressure-from-wall-street-power-players-report-1436705/?utm_campaign=bizpac&utm_content=Newsletter&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_source=Get%20Response&utm_term=EMAIL

[Crafty_Dog]

As we have discussed here preiously (thread?) there is good reason to be seriously critical of Jared's deal with the Saudis.   That said, I remember it as being after Trump left office?


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/hunter-biden-shoved-jared-kushner-s-corruption-into-gop-lawmakers-faces-dem-lawmaker/ar-BB1jaS47?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=dce17304524f440f91f1de9a0ecae92e&ei=85

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68534703

[Body-by-Guinness]

Inside trade much?

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/03/democratic-senator-called-resign-finance-committee-chairman-wife/

[Body-by-Guinness]

This certainly appears to bolster the “legislating by regulation” argument. As such perhaps a court can find these numerous proffered regs unlawful in a similar broad spectrum manner:

Confronting A Surge In Costly Federal Rules

Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. Contributor
May 13, 2024

As of Monday, May 13, there have been 1,148 rules and regulations finalized among the 41,830 pages published to date in the 2024 Federal Register.

Page tallies of over 800 per day have suddenly become routine. Last week’s 4,225 pages represented nearly double 2024’s weekly pace so far.

At any given moment several thousand rules and regulations populate the production process. There are several flavors of “significant” rules, the costliest subset of which consists of rules the Biden administration deems “Section 3(f)1 Significant” (S3F1).

The significance of significance: Rooted in a Clinton-era executive order which until recently showcased $100 million “economically significant” rules, the S3F1 designation under Biden now instead refers to rules attaining a threshold of $200 million in annual economic effects. Now, lesser rules costing “only” $100 million or deemed significant due to certain other non-cost characteristics can fly under the radar.
 
This is a “significant” development to coin a term since, in a January 2024 compilation, I inventoried fully 232 S3F1 work-in-process rules in the pre-rule, proposed and final stages. The implication of Biden’s threshold change is that there are likely more costly rules in the pipeline below $200 million but above the old $100 million threshold that do not get the attention they deserve.

In any event, this is an election year, and the January inventory was intended to remind Congress that many of these high-impact rules would be rushed to completion in the Federal Register in order to outrace a looming summer deadline beyond which they become vulnerable to Congressional Review Act (CRA) “resolutions of disapproval” (RODs) overturning them in 2025, should Biden not secure re-election.
As summarized by George Washington University's Regulatory Studies Center:

"The CRA's lookback provision gives Congress an additional chance to review rules issued in the period starting 60 working days before the end of a session of Congress through the beginning of the subsequent session of Congress.
Rules issued during the lookback period are treated as if they were published in the Federal Register and reported to Congress on the 15th working day of the subsequent session of Congress"

And sure enough, to avoid that prospect, some of the flagged S3F1 rules have landed in rapid succession in recent weeks’ editions of the inflated Federal Register. Some in Congress are introducing resolutions of disapproval anyway, knowing full well these attempts will be vetoed by Biden. Rules garnering media attention as evidence of Biden “Trump-proofing” his agenda include:

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s climate disclosure rule;
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) "Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles." This is the rule seen as the vehicle, no pun intended, to effectuate Biden’s EV mandates;
EPA’s Reconsideration of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter;
The Department of Labor’s “Standard for Determining Joint Employer Status” as well as its “Employee or Independent Contractor Classification Under the Fair Labor Standards Act;
The Federal Communications Commission’s “Prevention and Elimination of Digital Discrimination”’;
The Department of Energy’s “Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Furnaces”;

Resolutions of disapproval for other rules such as the Federal Trade Commission’s highly controversial rule prohibiting non-compete agreements would surprise no one, but the FTC rule is and those to follow would likewise be safe if the administration issues them quickly. Already during the Biden era the 117th and 118th Congresses each passed several RODs; but other than early ones overturning Trump-era actions, Biden has vetoed these. (Incidentally, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the American Action Forum, and the George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center among others track CRA resolutions.)

It’s the weight, not the flow (sometimes): Biden's executive actions in 2024 are notable not for the high numbers of executive orders and memoranda that characterized his first year, nor paradoxically even for an abnormally high number of rules.
Instead, Biden's recent activity is characterized by highly costly and transformative nature of rules fat enough to produce the aforementioned record-level Federal Register page counts. The all-time record was Obama’s 95,894 in 2016; the second highest count was Biden’s own 89,368 in 2023. At the current clip, however, the 2024 Federal Register will top 100,000 pages, taking us closer to the million-pages-per-decade warned of in recent editions of Ten Thousand Commandments.

The Limits of RODs: Clearly things have to align just so to roll back rules using the Congressional Review Act. The CRA has undone fewer than two dozen rules since its enactment in 1996. Most of those occurred under Trump, whose administration overturned too-late Obama rules. Biden’s team, who also overturned late-issued Trump deregulatory actions in precisely that fashion, has clearly learned the game and is ensuring that the largest of rules are landing in the Federal Register now to keep them protected from RODs.

Given the circumstances, one lesson for House and Senate leadership, if they anticipate 119th Congress majorities and a Republican president, would be to minimize legislative days for the remainder of 2024 to maximize backward chronological reach to capture more of these rules on the current Biden glide path. That is, a new Congress would want to stretch that 60-day lookback as far back in time as possible.

Members of Congress ought not despair at the futility of vacating all of Biden’s pet rules recently finalized. There remain, as the January inventory implies, a lot more rules on the 2024 legislative calendar potentially vulnerable to overturn in the 119th Congress in 2025 as they’re not all likely to beat the deadline. And of the rules that remain unfinalized, a new administration can just freeze and withdraw them.
Monitoring the broader “significant” subset: Additional S3F1 major and otherwise significant rules (as well as routine and non-significant ones) naturally have come into play since the January snapshot, likely including ones limbo-ing in just under the cost threshold. While Biden’s $200 million rules garner the most attention, it is important that policymakers not forget that the CRA itself still highlights the larger subset of $100 million rules, defining them in statute as “major” and requiring preparation of a formal albeit brief report on them by the Government Accountability Office.

The subset of the final rules deemed broadly “significant” under E.O. 12,866 during recent years is presented below. Biden had 289 significant final rules in 2023. While that was down from 375 in 2021, the significant rules subset under Biden appears to be tracking upward in both relative and absolute terms, destined to meet and exceed Obama levels.

Projecting the 155 as of today (May 13) implies 422 significant rules by the end of the year. Granted, that could decelerate after summertime, when large rules would be vulnerable to overturn should Biden not secure reelection. On the other hand, there is also a tendency of outgoing presidents to push through a number of midnight rules during their final lame-duck weeks, knowing some of it will stick given the sheer volume.

Standouts in the chart above are Obama’s final year of 486, when the Federal Register cracked its all time page record. Trump’s 2020 tally of 436 is a big one too; but many of those rules were deregulatory in intent—rolling back some of Obama—as part of the one-in, two-out campaign of the era. The Trump low of 199 in 2018 corresponds to the lowest total rule count since the National Archives began presenting rule counts in the 1970s; in 2018 there were fewer than 3,000 rules issued for the first and only time.

Significant rule counts bear close watching by Congress. Recognizing that overlap occurs in transition years, Barack Obama’s eight years brought 3,037 significant rules, for an annual average of 380. Donald Trump’s four years brought 1,121 significant rules, for an annual average of “only” 280 with a chunk of those deregulatory. Joe Biden’s first three years brought 932 significant rules for an average of 311 but that average appears to be ticking upward in 2024 if the chart holds.

Clearly the CRA can’t do it all: The job of Congress now is to pursue regulatory reforms that can have an effect regardless of what transpires with resolutions of disapproval this year. Many CRAs will be exercises in futility if there is no change in administration and if the GOP does not control both houses. But regardless of what happens in that respect, the sheer flow of significant rules requires addressing by more comprehensive means such as regulatory budgeting, sunsetting and a bipartisan commission to chop rules, and most importantly, dialing back on the hefty laws like the CARES Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act that are the engines of much of the fat new rulemaking.

As for the CRA, while it did represent one of the most important affirmations of congressional accountabiltiy for rulemaking, it has never been quite the right tool; that tool will be legislation instead assuring that no major or controversial rule can be effective unless Congress votes to affirm it, as opposed to the current situation requiring Congress to get up on its hind legs to block odious ones. The current version of such a law is called “Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny,” or REINS Act; but a better moniker was the predecessor Congressional Responsibility Act, and the acronym could stay the same.

For now, and in preparation, Congress needs to keep a close eye on the flow of significant rules.

https://apple.news/AhLFH4p-nTzKutGErTpcPkg

[Crafty_Dog]

Vivek Ramaswamy is very strong and thoughtful on this issue.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://rumble.com/v4x6rjh-newly-uncovered-documents-suggest-trump-was-right-about-john-kerry-and-iran.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=One%20America%20News%20Network

[ccp]

one caveat:
this is from Newsweek.

https://www.newsweek.com/everything-judge-merchan-told-trump-jurors-1903173

Honestly, I don't have the energy to think this all through and since not of legal mind/training I am not sure I understand it even if I did.

But listening to some podcasts the legal experts on our side feel the judge has clearly put his foot on the scales of justice to favor the prosecution.

Hard to believe otherwise in view of his political persuasion.

[Body-by-Guinness]

Upcoming SCOTUS decision may hobble sundry administrative courts.

Wish there was comprehensible research out there that could be used to measure the efficacy of various federal (and state, for that matter) agencies to measure there ROI. My guess is any metric wouldn’t be kind and hence would serve to suggest we don’t much need many of these agencies, casting their enforcement tactics more as something that justifies their existences, rather than provides measurable benefits beyond creating voting blocks that cast ballots as an act of self-preservation:

Justices may shrink the bureaucracy
“I want a government small enough to fit inside the Constitution.” -- Harry Browne
MAY 29, 2024

Politico is concerned that the deep state will no longer get to shove people around.

It reported:

A decade-long conservative crusade against financial regulators will come to a head soon with a crucial Supreme Court ruling, part of a legal strategy that has spread across multiple Washington agencies into a broad attack on a core power of the federal government.

The court’s ruling on Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, a case challenging the power of in-house federal judges, could hobble a whole range of agencies in unpredictable ways, cutting the powers of antitrust enforcers, labor regulators and consumer finance watchdogs.

Good. They should be hobbled.

The bureaucracy makes the rules, enforces them and hires the judge-jury-and-executioner to hear the case. The president — or someone else in the administration — appoints them without Senate confirmation.

The abuse of this power by bureaucrats goes way, way back like a Jim Thome homerun. A half-century ago, Donald Trump made the Front Page of the New York Times for the first time — Major Landlord Accused Of Antiblack Bias in City.

HUD thought it had him. Trump and his dad hired Roy Cohn, the prosecutor of the Rosenberg traitors (and lefty icon) who took the case out of the hands of an administrative law judge by suing HUD for $100 million in federal court. Two years later they settled with the Trumps agreeing to be sure to rent to black people. No fine. No admission of guilt. No Front Page story.

This case is similar.

The American Bar Association’s summary was “This case concerns the Securities and Exchange Commission’s ability to bring enforcement actions for securities fraud before administrative law judges, rather than in federal district court. The target of an enforcement action argues this venue choice stems from an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the SEC and that the proceeding violates the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. In U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, the Court has the potential to change the way government agency claims are adjudicated.”

I am not really sure how the agency judges square with the right to a fair trial.

The ABA said, “The proceeding is similar to a trial except that many of the hallmarks of due process are absent: there is no jury, there is no discovery, the evidentiary rules are relaxed, and guilt is determined by a preponderance of evidence. Either side may appeal the ALJ’s decision to the SEC commissioners, and the SEC’s final decision may be appealed to a federal appeals court. The appeals court may only reverse the SEC’s ruling if the findings were unsupported by ‘substantial evidence’ in the record.”

The ALJ’s decision cost Jarkesy (a company) just under a million bucks. The legal fees to bring the case to the highest court in the land likely exceeded that. The federal government has an unlimited supply of money.

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Maverick’s NBA team, squared off against the SEC’s rigged system a decade ago — and lost.

He told Politico, “I support the right to a jury trial. Period, end of story. There is no constitutional reason or support for the SEC or any government agency to supersede that.”

Other billionaires are fighting back.

Politico said, “Since Jarkesy was filed, companies including Meta (Zuckerberg), SpaceX (Musk) and Amazon (Bezos) have escalated it into a broader fight against federal power by suing other agencies over their own courts — a way of fighting unfavorable judgments by attacking the system that delivered it.”

The bureaucracy uses the ALJ system for the sake of convenience. But the Constitution’s sole purpose is to make governing as inconvenient as possible.

Politico said, “Others have fretted that the high court’s ruling could even hit the routine in-house courts of agencies like the Social Security Administration, which employs about 1,200 administrative judges. If not properly tailored, they say, the decision could wind up sending a wave of relatively low-dollar Social Security claims into the already bustling federal courts.”

The Constitution says, “In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”

20 bucks is 20 bucks.

If the actual judiciary cannot deal with all these cases that is a sign that you have too many laws and too many bureaucratic regulators.

Why do we need an EPA? The air and water have never been cleaner. Why do we have a Department of Education? We flooded the schools with trillions of dollars over the years and the results are worse. Why do we have a Department of Transportation? We built an interstate system before it came along. Under the gay guy, we are destroying parts of it in the name of fighting a racism that no longer exists.

The agency judicial system is corruptible. Nationally, about 54% of appeals of Social Security disability claims denials are reversed in the system.

However, in the early 21st century, in Huntington, West Virginia, if you hired Kentucky attorney Eric C. Conn to appeal, you had a 100% chance of winning. That’s because he kicked back more than $600,000 to ALJ David B. Daugherty. The feds eventually prosecuted and Daugherty got 4 years in prison while Conn received 12 years with another 15 years tacked on for fleeing to Honduras. The story is here.

But David Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor and former head of consumer protection at the Federal Trade Commission in the Obama administration, ominously warned that doing away with the ALJs will spell doom.

Politico reported:

In practice, though, a jury trial might not always be the best option strategically for defendants, said Vladeck — especially those like Jarkesy facing claims of securities fraud.

“Juries hate scam artists,” Vladeck said. “Be careful what you wish for.”

The Constitution hates tyranny and you had best believe the bureaucracy is tyrannical. The USA has so many laws that bureaucrats can pick and choose which laws they want to pick against whom.

If ridding us of this ALJ system overloads the courts and makes enforcement of all these rules impossible, so be it.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote of King George III, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

He and 55 other patriots signed off on that — as part of the Declaration of Independence.

When Harry Browne said, “I want a government small enough to fit inside the Constitution,” he spoke for every single patriot in the country alive today — and all of the dead ones.

https://donsurber.substack.com/p/justices-may-shrink-the-bureaucracy?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

[DougMacG]

Great post, exposing a terrible situation. The Harry Browne quote makes you wonder, who doesn't want "a government so small it could fit inside the constitution"? The answer of course is all liberal leftists including 3 sure votes on the Supreme Court.

I've been inside the administrative trial system twice and seen the problem first-hand. The first one was a mock trial, where by the end you realize the prosecutor, the judge, the jury (there isn't one) all go to lunch together when it's over, they all work in the same office for the same agency. The second time was during covid and so the mock trial was held over the phone. I submitted time stamped photographic evidence proving my innocence. A guy listened to my story and then a decision comes in the mail, guilty. These were both relating to housing inspections in the City of Minneapolis. The preponderance of evidence to their co-worker, the judge, was simply that the inspector said so. In the second case, his error was as simple as putting the wrong house number down on an alleged violation of sidewalk shoveling. Sounds like a small matter, but having a ticket against a rental property in Minneapolis can lead to losing what they call Tier 1 status and cost thousands of dollars more in future license fees and lead to greater scrutiny, more false charges, down the road on all your properties.

Because the cases are administrative, not criminal, the defendant has no rights and the prosecution needs no proof. But what is the difference? I'm accused of breaking the law. If this was this was a criminal case, I would be subject to fines, if guilty. This is an administrative case so they can issue same fines plus take away my entire livelihood and net worth.

If they find a way of striking this system down, that would be great. Imagine if people in this country had rights, like the right to defend yourself against false charges.

[Body-by-Guinness]

As this occurred in flyover country don’t expect the MSM to do much reporting on it:

Judge forces SEC to drop Utah crypto case, pay $1.8M fees due to 'deeply troubling' misconduct
By Collin Leonard, KSL.com | Posted - June 4, 2024 at 3:08 p.m.
 
SEC prosecutors, alleging Draper-based crypto company Debt Box and others engaged in fraudulent business practices, were sanctioned and their case dismissed May 28, after it was found they acted in bad faith when seeking an emergency order to freeze the defendant's assets.
SEC prosecutors, alleging Draper-based crypto company Debt Box and others engaged in fraudulent business practices, were sanctioned and their case dismissed May 28, after it was found they acted in bad faith when seeking an emergency order to freeze the defendant's assets. (DepositPhotos)
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SALT LAKE CITY — "Companies were seized, assets were frozen and lives were upended" as a result of misconduct by prosecutors for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a federal judge said while dismissing a civil fraud case against Utah cryptocurrency brokers and awarding the brokers $1.8 million in attorney fees.

U.S. Chief District Judge Robert Shelby upbraided the commission, saying it recklessly used "layers of false statements" in a "gross abuse of power," saying their misrepresentations were "deeply troubling" and undermined the integrity of the judicial process, before dismissing its case May 28 and ordering payment of fees that will ultimately be financed by taxpayers.

In July 2023, Debt Box, a cryptocurrency broker formerly operating out of Draper, and North Salt Lake financial technology company iX Global, along with a number of other associated parties, were sued by the SEC alleging "an ongoing, sprawling, fraudulent securities offering through which defendants have defrauded thousands of investors of at least $49 million," according to the initial complaint.

Rather than use investors' money to support the business, the SEC claimed "defendants misappropriated the funds for their own personal gain — buying luxury vehicles and homes, taking lavish vacations, and showering themselves and their friends with cash."

Critically, the commission told Shelby that business owners were rapidly shutting down their U.S.-based bank accounts and transferring investor funds overseas "to place them beyond the reach of the court."

The SEC requested a short-term emergency order to freeze the assets of the companies in question and effectively take over the management of the companies while the case was being litigated.

The request is a form of extraordinary relief, Shelby said in an opinion, because at that stage in the lawsuit, the court was working with nothing but "unproven allegations," and must take extreme care not to abuse the judicial process.

In oral arguments, the prosecution claimed the companies closed 33 bank accounts in the last 48 hours. It said the companies had drained bank accounts and were transferring money overseas to avoid SEC oversight.

The judge granted the motion to freeze assets and take over the companies, but two months later, found that "each piece of support" the commission offered in its claims "proved to be some combination of false, mischaracterized and misleading."

To make things worse, after the prosecution was put on notice for its misrepresentations, it "nevertheless affirmed those positions and did so in a way that demonstrated an attempt to obfuscate and continue misleading the court rather than acknowledge error," according to court documents.

Shelby wrote that a total of 24 accounts had been closed, not the 33 suggested, over a span of two years. The defendants did not close these accounts — the bank did. And the funds were not transferred overseas, they were transferred to a bank headquartered in Sandy.

The judge said these claims were "at best reckless. This was not merely an inaccuracy."

Other accounts were not found to have been drained, they were simply fluctuating over the course of normal business. A YouTube video used as a key piece of evidence was found to have been taken out of context to mislead the court, according to the judge. Inferences were presented as factual, despite having no direct evidence to support them.

Some of the error was attributed to miscommunication, and the SEC said it "sincerely regrets the error" it made when choosing not to notify the court when staff members learned the statements made were "inaccurate in multiple respects."

The judge did not find the argument convincing, and posited that the prosecution "expressly traded on its special standing as a federal agency — reminding the court it had been granted this relief several times in the past 10 years — to demonstrate it could be trusted when asking for this tremendous exercise of judicial authority."

The prosecution then claimed it had "sovereign immunity" from any monetary sanction — an argument Shelby promptly shot down.

Debt Box celebrated the win, posting on social media the dismissal was "a monumental victory, not just for Debt Box but for the entire industry and our dedicated community." Many reacted to the news as though the ruling cleared the company of wrongdoing, but the jubilee may be short-lived.

Shelby wrote that the "order should not be construed as offering any views on the underlying merits of the case," and while the suit was dismissed as it stands, the SEC is able to refile its claims of fraud, so long as it does so with Shelby presiding.

https://www.ksl.com/article/51030326/judge-forces-sec-to-drop-utah-crypto-case-pay-18m-fees-due-to-deeply-troubling-misconduct

[Crafty_Dog]

https://washingtontimes-dc.newsmemory.com/?token=86b48c1d0e79ef4eb54af52ddc471de3_666aef9a_6d25b5f&selDate=20240613

[Crafty_Dog]

Supreme Court Tosses Mayor’s Bribery Conviction, Again Raising Bar for Public-Corruption Prosecutions
A 6-3 court says Indiana Republican was wrongly convicted of accepting a payment after awarding truck contract
By
Jess Bravin
Follow
June 26, 2024 12:18 pm ET


WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court overturned the bribery conviction of an Indiana mayor who took $13,000 from a local truck dealership after it won a city contract, ruling Wednesday that a federal anticorruption law applies only to payments for future official conduct, not gratuities for past acts.

The 6-3 decision is the latest in a series of high-court rulings reining in federal prosecutions targeting corruption in state and local government, which the justices increasingly have seen as holding public officials to a higher standard than Congress authorized.

Wednesday’s case concerned James Snyder, who as mayor of Portage, Ind., accepted the payment from Great Lakes Peterbilt after the city paid the company about $1.1 million for five garbage trucks. Snyder, a Republican, was sentenced to a year and nine months imprisonment for violating a federal law making it illegal for state and local officials to corruptly solicit or accept “anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded” for an official act.

Writing for the court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the structure of the statute suggested it was meant only to cover bribery ahead of an official act. A separate law forbids federal officials from accepting gratuities, but Congress didn’t enact a second statute to cover local and state officials, Kavanaugh wrote.

Congress might have preferred to let states address public corruption in their own ways, Kavanaugh wrote, and a variety of laws are on the books across the country. “Those differing approaches reflect nuanced state and local policy judgments about when gifts expressing appreciation to public officials for their past acts cross the line from the innocuous to the problematic,” he wrote, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.

Neither state nor local authorities pursued charges against Snyder, Kavanaugh noted. 

The decision follows Supreme Court rulings last year that threw out a pair of corruption convictions stemming from the tenure of former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In 2020 the court tossed two public-corruption convictions in the New Jersey scandal known as Bridgegate. And in 2016, it overturned the conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican.

Snyder, elected mayor in 2011, said the truck dealership was hiring him as a consultant, not rewarding him for the city contract. But his appeal argued that the law didn’t cover payments for past acts at all, and said siding with the government could make criminals out of police officers who take doughnuts from crime victims or kindergarten teachers who accept gift cards from parents.

In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that “Snyder’s absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love.” Joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, she argued that by using the word “rewarded” Congress intended to cover past acts, and said that lawmakers excluded innocent courtesies from prosecution by specifying the measure applied only to gifts accepted “corruptly.”

Jackson noted the evidence prosecutors presented against Snyder: He appointed a friend to oversee the bidding process, which was tailored to favor Great Lakes Peterbilt, a company owned by two brothers who Snyder was frequently calling and texting. Dealership employees “testified that Snyder never performed any consulting work” and no contract, invoice or other documentation was produced relating to any such work, Jackson wrote.

[ccp]

On the face of it , I agree with the libs here

I don't see the difference between a bribe prior to the award or after but for sure this is done all the time all over the us
one way or the other .

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/exclusive-ex-biden-admin-official-hit-with-ethics-complaint-after-allegedly-funneling-billions-to-his-current-org/ar-BB1oZVTQ?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=e953a64b054449b884002163266bdb3b&ei=109

[Crafty_Dog]

Snyder v. U.S. Is a Defeat for Zealous Prosecutors
The Supreme Court tilts against prosecutions based on vague law.
By The Editorial Board
June 27, 2024 5:38 pm ET

The Supreme Court in recent years has narrowed the ambit of prosecutors who file corruption charges that stretch ambiguous laws. They did it again Wednesday by ruling (Snyder v. U.S.) that it’s not a crime under federal law for state and local officials to accept gratuities in return for past actions.

Prosecutors charged James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage, Ind., with violating Section 666 of the federal criminal code by accepting a $13,000 check from a local truck company that received city contracts. Section 666 prohibits “corruptly” soliciting or accepting “anything of value from any person, intending to be influenced or rewarded” for an official act.

Mr. Snyder claimed the check was a payment for his consulting services rather than a bribe. He also claimed the law prohibits state and local officials from accepting or soliciting bribes in return for official acts—not for taking gratuities as tokens of appreciation for those acts.

Six Justices agreed with his interpretation. “Some gratuities can be problematic,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh writes for the majority. “Others are commonplace and might be innocuous,” such as a college dean giving a “college sweatshirt to a city council member who comes to speak at an event.” Yet neither Congress nor prosecutors have drawn a clear line between the two.

In 1984 Congress passed Section 666, which originally extended a prohibition on gratuities for federal officials to local and state officials. But two years later Congress reversed course. Section 666 “now closely resembles the bribery provision for federal officials,” Justice Kavanaugh writes.

States regulate gratuities differently. “Perhaps Congress in 1986 concluded that federally criminalizing state and local gratuities would significantly intrude on federalism,” he writes, adding that “as a general matter, States have the ‘prerogative to regulate the permissible scope of interactions between state officials and their constituents.’”

Regardless, “the Government’s interpretation of the statute would create traps for unwary state and local officials” since it “does not identify any remotely clear lines separating an innocuous or obviously benign gratuity from a criminal gratuity,” Justice Kavanaugh explains. “Is a $100 Dunkin’ Donuts gift card for a trash collector wrongful?” States can always write their own laws outlawing the acceptance of gratuities, as some have.

The three liberal Justices in dissent interpreted the federal law more broadly. “Greed makes governments—at every level—less responsive, less efficient, and less trustworthy from the perspective of the communities they serve,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writes in a notably fierce dissent, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Greed isn’t good, and corruption is never far from politics. Genuinely corrupt officials warrant prosecution. But another threat to liberty is from prosecutors who indict officials for behavior that isn’t clearly illegal. Justice Neil Gorsuch says the law should tilt in those cases toward what he calls “lenity,” which is what the Court did Wednesday.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://washingtontimes-dc.newsmemory.com/?token=5d11cb459b3c6d9d2b7a53632cf0fa9a_668be50a_6d25b5f&selDate=20240708

[Crafty_Dog]

The State Department Inspector General said officials failed to follow standard procedures when they suspended Iran special envoy Robert Malley’s security clearance in April 2023, allowing Malley to continue accessing classified information after his clearance was suspended. According to Congressional staffers who attended a closed door briefing from the Inspector General, the State Department worked to shield Malley from embarrassment and misled lawmakers about Malley’s clearance suspension

[ccp]

"The State Department Inspector General said officials failed to follow standard procedures when they suspended Iran special envoy Robert Malley’s security clearance in April 2023, allowing Malley to continue accessing classified information after his clearance was suspended. According to Congressional staffers who attended a closed door briefing from the Inspector General, the State Department worked to shield Malley from embarrassment and misled lawmakers about Malley’s clearance suspension"

God almighty !!   why can't we hold these bastards accountable.

outrageous.

They work for us not the other way around.

[Body-by-Guinness]

Wait, what’s that you say? Money sent to NGOs to combat homelessness ends up in the pockets of the relatives of Democrats? Surely an intrepid MSM journalist would be all over this story, well unless they too were a bought and paid subsidiary of Democrats, too:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1837915316761837744?s=61

Jeepers, I wonder if something similar is occurring with all those NGO “serving” those that enter the country illegally?

[Crafty_Dog]

The Quad (U.S., Japan, Australia, India) released a joint statement announcing increased maritime security cooperation through joint Coast Guard missions and an integrated airlift capacity. In response, China’s People’s Liberation Army and state media published an opinion piece declaring the Quad as a containment strategy and highlighting the “inability” of other nations to decouple or de-risk from China.

[Crafty_Dog]

According to people briefed on the investigation, the FBI is investigating a deepfake operation impersonating former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba that targeted Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD). According to a Senate security office notice, the person impersonating Kuleba asked Cardin if he supported Ukraine launching long-range missiles into Russia, and politically charged questions about the 2024 election.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://humanevents.com/2023/03/02/exclusive-alexander-vindman-secretly-pitching-ukrainian-military-for-millions-in-defense-contracts

[DougMacG]

https://humanevents.com/2023/03/02/exclusive-alexander-vindman-secretly-pitching-ukrainian-military-for-millions-in-defense-contracts

Funny how this sinister fellow wasn't exposed more; his identity was protected during the impeachment.

[Crafty_Dog]

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate if former Trump advisor Jared Kushner acted as an unregistered foreign agent for Saudi Arabia. Kushner said there is no conflict of interest and the letter is a “silly political stunt.”

[Body-by-Guinness]

https://humanevents.com/2023/03/02/exclusive-alexander-vindman-secretly-pitching-ukrainian-military-for-millions-in-defense-contracts

Funny how this sinister fellow wasn't exposed more; his identity was protected during the impeachment.

He’s running for congress a couple counties east of me where I use to live. Astounds me how few of his opponent’s ads note this sort of treachery.

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/13/cia-leak-israel-iran-attack-asif-rahman

[Body-by-Guinness]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/13/cia-leak-israel-iran-attack-asif-rahman

That’s what happens when you sling about top secret clearances like lollipops….

[Body-by-Guinness]

A good survey of where we are, and how the Deep State will respond:

The Swamp Strikes Back
What are the lessons of Trump's national victory and of the immediate following secret ballot election of a Swamp Senate Majority Leader?

JUPPLANDIA
NOV 14, 2024
The lessons from the 2024 election should be extremely clear.

Trump delivered every Swing State. He delivered an increased black vote, an increased Latino vote, an increased young male vote. He is the most successful Republican in the modern era in terms of attracting voters from traditionally Democrat voting demographics. Blue collar and Rust Belt Democrats have of course been going to him in droves since 2016 based on the pretty reasonable realization that Trump was the first politician to actually listen to them in decades. The leader of a Union that might once have been prepared to bury Republican bodies in an underpass, like the Teamsters Union, attended his Republican Conference.

Trump has delivered the three highest Presidential vote totals in US history, barring the solitary and now even more obviously crooked 81 million votes of Joe Biden in 2020.

And of course he drew in former Democrats from the opposite social end of the spectrum to blue collar workers. He obtained the endorsements of Robert F.Kennedy Jnr and of Tulsi Gabbard and of Elon Musk, all of whom were once considered to be on the other side. Kennedy brought with him that element of the Left that is still capable of acknowledging reality, while Musk’s example even shifted a portion of the Silicon Valley and tech industry moguls.

In the 2024 campaign, Trump’s team even reversed the pattern of voting by which many natural Republicans conceded through apathy. The base was highly motivated and not put off by the appeal to breaking away chunks of the Democrat core vote. The campaign crucially got large numbers of voters to vote early, and apathetic sectors to engage and work towards victory.

Even the Amish came out and voted for Trump. Think about that. A people defined by a high degree of rejection of involvement in the affairs of ‘the English’ as they still sometimes designate the rest of America, were motivated to vote for Trump. A similar odd triumph can be found in the fact one of the most Republican voting demographics of 2024, in some places the most Trump endorsing demographic of all, was the Native American vote.

Now that’s a demographic everything about the modern Democrat Party is supposed to appeal to. Democrats support ethnic identity based politics and are long practiced in developing ‘community leaders’ who essentially organize block ethnic minority voting based on a patronage and client relationship where various public spending bribes seal the deal. This has been the Democrat Plantation tactic for many years. And of course Democrat backed ethnic propaganda cement this essentially corrupt relationship with narratives of oppression and ancient grievance. There can be few groups on the surface more susceptible to this than Native Americans, especially as Critical Race Theory and Marxist land narratives turn all American history into a Stolen Land fable of white malice and Noble Savage oppression.

But despite the Democrat CRT dominance of academia and whole departments of universities focused on Native American grievance just as determinedly as they focus on Black grievance or Palestinian and Muslim grievance (narratives which Democrat voting control of the film, media and entertainment industry also spreads through the whole of popular culture)….Native Americans voted around 58% in favor of Trump nationwide. In Arizona 64% of the Native American vote went to Trump.

The truth is that Trump the divisive, racist, xenophobic, alienating and offensive Literally Hitler white supremacist Trump, is the most successful and attractive Republican in terms of drawing in ethnic minorities the Republicans have had in the modern era, and possibly ever, given the low percentages he was starting from and especially given the media and Democrat combined established hold on these groups and constant propaganda telling them that Trump represents a threat to their very existence.

Compared to other Republicans for 50 or even a 100 years, minorities love Trump. Being shot, being subject to lawfare, being a convicted felon and a man the State could not destroy appealed to a youth, black and street culture influenced group of voters. Talking about God’s role in his survival as well as a uniquely judged balancing of liberal and conservative views socially gives him appeal to older and religious voters, both Evangelicals and Christians generally turned off by the often progressive-woke stance of many Churches.

Common sense views on the family and patriotism and capitalism have a particular resonance for religiously conservative Latino voters and voters who themselves or whose parents fled Communist regimes. All this is far more attractive far more broadly than Swamp Republicanism is. MAGA is actually about as far from an exclusively white male (let alone white supremacist) movement as you can get. Which underlying the insane rhetoric is of course another reason for a party dependent on racial division to fear and hate him.

So Trump’s broad appeal encompasses both reassuring the existing Republican vote that he will challenge Globalist, woke and progressive views and the corruption of elite interests, AND bringing exactly the SAME promise to ethnic minority groups who are a lot more socially conservative minded and a lot more worried about food bills than their rich white Democrat ‘champions’ are.

By the end, the hysterical Democrat campaign had reached the point of effectively telling their prior client groups that if Trump was elected they would be put in death camps. That is what the Trump is Hitler narrative was saying, and that is what people were seeing in their newspapers, in Biden’s broadcasts and public addresses, in the screeching denunciations of actors and actresses, in the misinformation efforts of the likes of Robert Reich and Rob Reiner (there seems to be a split where a Bobby becomes sensible but a Rob or a Robert should definitely be avoided…).

The only people still acting as if it was true and a real threat are largely trans activists and affluent young white women with a university degree and genuine mental health issues. For some strange reason Joe Biden was quite able to sit with Literally Hitler and have a polite chat with him, indicating the pure depth of cynicism behind those earlier rants and apocalyptic warnings. The Trump is Hitler narrative is exposed for what it always was, a naked lie combined with a hypocritical grasp at total power and unending power.

The ethnic vote across the board rejected this line. Yes, the Democrat advantage in the black and Jewish vote is still (depressingly) strong. But Trump is the first Republican in decades to get it moving in his direction, to create a big red crack in these previously impenetrable blue walls of Democrat voting.

All of this of course speaks to Donald Trump’s personal magnetism and example, although both Democrat and RINO commentators and voters consistently underestimate his strengths. Their cartoonish and malign depiction of him is so fixed in their minds that they cannot comprehend the appeal of moments like his defiant response to an assassination attempt or his interactions with grieving service families, border patrol agents, cops, firemen, soldiers, union members, restaurant workers or ordinary people in street encounters. Trump does the traditional glad-handing of a campaigner in a much more immediate, real and genuinely affectionate way than career politicians are now capable of, and he does it with a humor and grace totally opposite to the TDS caricature of the man. Ordinary people respond to that and love the humor of his McDonald’s appearance or garbage truck appearance just as much as the superior and condescending elite class view these moments as proof of Trump’s crudeness.

His brilliant instinct for the common touch is, to the self-indoctrinated affluent class, merely revoltingly common.

With so much of their distaste for Trump then being wrapped up in class conscious snobbery and threatened elite value judgements not shared by voters lower down the social scale, they are reduced to lying to themselves about how obviously vile and unattractive to everyone Trump must be. That some people see blunt honesty where they see constant lies, or determined courage against corruption where they see ‘convicted felon’, cannot properly register with them. To acknowledge Trump’s attractive and charismatic features would be to question the depth and acknowledge the irrationality of their own hatred, and they can’t do that.

They are the elite, he is crude, vulgar and disgusting, and the common herd who vote for him are too. This is the level of their perception and awareness, whether they are Democrat or Republican Trump haters and whether they are professional political strategists and journalists or academics and students at provincial universities. At the core of it all the hate is psychologically driven by the fact that his popularity with the people and attunement to their needs and desires is also automatically a rejection of their sense of superiority, intelligence and deserved social rank above the common man. In such a situation they must scrabble around for explanations that allow them to keep feeling superior, and the appealing one there is that Trump is a demagogue and other people are too stupid to perceive it.

This is of course an absurd misreading and self-defeating because you then start describing all his voters as Nazis or morons (hardly likely to change their minds or attract their votes). But its pragmatic uselessness (as political strategy, as genuine explanation) is less important than the true task of such propaganda: psychologically letting the elite escape the recognition of their own flaws, letting them keep feeling that they are superior, righteous and smart, and letting them cling lovingly to all the policies people don’t actually want. In that, it is highly useful to those wishing to explain away their own faults.

The purpose of demonizing propaganda is then not just to bully and intimidate the detested figure and the detested group. It is to affirm and protect the ego and self-valuation of the demoniser. It is a tribute to their own vanity and an affirmation of their superiority especially when objective reality or public popularity is telling them they are wrong. We often forget how much their propaganda at its most strident is aimed at themselves, buttressing a sense of moral and intellectual superiority, affirming insane delusions, proving social, cultural and institutional power when they get to spread it everywhere. By the end, by the point that the wider world is sick of it and moves decisively against it, they are only talking to themselves (like the sobbing and screaming people who post videos of their hysterical reactions to Trump’s win). Perversely, the reason you post clips that prove to others how delusional you are, is to prove to yourself that you aren’t.

If I scream this harder, it must still be true. It’s just that you are all so fucking stupid you voted for that MONSTER!.

In other words hating Trump avoids having to hate how wrong you are. Better to detest the 75 million people who vote for him than admit you might be wrong on a few things. How are you better than the common herd, how is your social eminence and personal wealth justified, if ordinary people or that ‘crude monster’ Donald Trump are actually smarter than you on political policy?

It is this class and psychological defensiveness and ego protection that powers much of the hatred of Donald Trump and the distaste, horror and fear with which his voters (ordinary Americans) and populism in general is viewed by the media and political elites or by the university educated who form the indoctrinated ground level support that remains to the edifice of superiority, corruption and delusion that is the Democrat Party. This protection of my sense of superiority factor is at least as important as pure financial and political corruption is.

When we look at the level of hate and the portrayal of Trump or the image of Trump held by established and successful figures and their paid agents throughout the western world, what we are seeing is something that doesn’t just relate to Trump as an individual but to a realignment of politics more broadly. It is a growth throughout the western world of two simultaneous forces-a growing sense from below that the people in charge get everything wrong (populism) meeting an ever more naked sense from the people in charge that the people below get everything wrong (Globalist-progressive authoritarianism). The people in charge cannot admit that populism is right and their policies harm most people not just because they profit from and are financially invested in these failed policies, but also because their identity and self-worth is invested in them too.

So what are the obvious lessons I mentioned at the start? They are these:

Only the elite and very specific, highly indoctrinated client groups back Globalist Progressive parties and woke politics.
Even long captured client groups and demographics are breaking away from identity politics centred and corrupt systems of preference and patronage.

The social and economic decline speeded by Globalist choices also speeds and develops (quite naturally) public resistance to those policies and public support for populist alternatives.

A grand realignment has seen the working classes and the ‘left behind’ become the groups championed by real conservatives, while the old parties of the Left become the parties of wealth, power, corporate interference, authoritarianism and neo-feudalism.

CRT and identity indoctrination is starting to fail as a means of controlling the ethnic minority vote as the corruption and genuine exploitation involved becomes more and more obvious. Even client groups eventually learn that its about cynical control rather than genuine care.
The power of legacy and corporate media is broken. While they can still act as an effective block to the punishment of guilty parties, they are no longer a powerful tool of persuasion because their audience is much smaller than alternative media and their history of dishonesty is now too glaringly obvious. They remain the established sources receiving elite funding, but they are utterly discredited and can’t shift an election result by lies alone. Their demonization of Trump failed.

Faced with such failure, the Globalist Progressive elite have only three choices. They can accept the new reality and treat Trump and populist policies in a more sane and balanced way, or they can double down and keep opposing them. the first shows people that their condemnations were hysterical and false. The second shows people that they still aren’t listening and can’t admit they were wrong. The choices there are both unflattering-coward submitting to new power, or fanatic incapable of adapting to a new reality. Their third choice is to pretend to accept some things they despise (treating Trump cordially, adopting some more popular sounding ideas) while of course acting very vigorously still to try to prevent populist policies and Trump type measures being adopted.

The third option will be the one adopted by most of them, and especially by the RINO and traitor within contingent of the Republican Party (the Swamp figures on the alleged Right). The election of Thune to Senate Majority Leader (making conciliatory noises towards Trump, but getting put in place as as McConnell clone as rapidly as possible) is the first move of the Wormtongue contingent of professional traitors within the Republican Party.

The first 7 points I outline above should make it blindingly obvious to all Republicans that their party and national interests are best served by embracing a Trump agenda. This is what delivers historic triumphs, as well as this being the set of policies that will deliver national success. The final point shows just how much Republican Swamp creatures remain the enemy within, and how much they have to be defeated just as comprehensively as the Democrats have been.

More broadly, Trump and MAGA populism is the real template of rightwing and conservative success elsewhere. The least popular, least convincing position of all is Swamp Establishment Conservatism, which has even fewer adherents outside the narrow bands of the people in a Senate or a Parliament than extreme woke and Globalist politics have. The only people more discredited than the media or the Democrats by the 2024 election result are the Republicans of the Liz Cheney, John Bolton, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell or Lincoln Project persuasion, and the kind of betraying the people fake conservatism they represent.

While Democrats can still draw on indoctrinated classes (a real, if deluded, remaining base essentially consisting of the still sleepwalking black and Jewish vote, journalists, LGBTQ+ activists, academics, students and the most hysterical women in the country of either gender..) Swamp Republicans have nobody except each other and the abusive-submissive relationship they have formed with the Democrats and such corrupt funding blocks as the military-industrial complex or Big Pharma. That funding is dependent on getting harmful vaccines passed or getting new wars delivered, and they have failed in that by losing to Trump and failing to stop Trump. Wormtongue only has Saruman as a ‘friend’, and Saruman beats him about the head and expects results.

How Thune acts next will give us a sense of whether any of the true realities can penetrate Senate Swamp consciousness, and perhaps also give us a degree of understanding of what actors (partially) behind the scenes like the Globalist intelligence services have on them. Some voices seem to think that Thune’s conciliatory language towards Trump in recent months or weeks is genuine. That seems a very hopeful position, but there are ways to impose the Trump platform and we do have the ability of just three Senators being required to impose a confidence vote. Getting Swamp Republicans to fall in line and not block what this administration intends to do is the next great task.

As with getting elected despite media bias, criminal lawfare and the opposition of vast networks of power like the military industrial complex provides both vital hope and a valuable lesson to populists and real conservatives elsewhere, dealing with the Swamp/Establishment contingent on the Right that has been owned and controlled by the Enemy for decades will give a template for other patriots and populists elsewhere. If the new Trump administration fails in this task, we can learn from it. If it succeeds, we can both learn and benefit from it.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jupplandia/p/the-swamp-strikes-back?r=484uxy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web