The Southern District of New York indicted an alleged money-laundering grifting ring this morning:
Audrey Strauss, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Philip R. Bartlett, Inspector-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the United States Postal Inspection Service (“USPIS”), announced the unsealing of an indictment charging BRIAN KOLFAGE, STEPHEN BANNON, ANDREW BADOLATO, and TIMOTHY SHEA for their roles in defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign known as “We Build the Wall” that raised more than $25 million…..
“As alleged, the defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction. While repeatedly assuring donors that Brian Kolfage, the founder and public face of We Build the Wall, would not be paid a cent, the defendants secretly schemed to pass hundreds of thousands of dollars to Kolfage, which he used to fund his lavish lifestyle. We thank the USPIS for their partnership in investigating this case, and we remain dedicated to rooting out and prosecuting fraud wherever we find it.”
Grifters gonna grift.
Open Thread.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I wonder how Trump will come down on this. He may feel Bannon et al were taking “his” money.
Gin & Tonic
Just a coincidence that the SDNY and the USPS are two institutions that Trump has been trying to neuter.
bluefish
Cheryl Rofer
I love this so much
steppy
@Dorothy A. Winsor: “I don’t know him, we only met a couple of times.”
Mike in NC
Nobody named Trump was indicted in this thing? How disappointing.
Cheryl Rofer
sanjeevs
TS (the original)
Of course I didn’t know there is a USPIS in existence. Can they investigate how the mail service is being decimated? Why the chickens died?
germy
I want to see a photo of Bannon wearing three prison shirts.
Kay
After they lost in 2012 Republicans had a public debate about the damage the huge numbers of grifters were doing to their Party. Enter Donald Trump. It’s 100 times worse now than it was then and it was really bad then. Ultimately it goes back to their ideology, though. They refuse to regulate and none of them can regulate themselves, there’s no inner monitor, so here we are. They can’t fix it without running afoul of the ideology.
MattF
‘You’re suggesting that there’s something wrong with grifting?’
Cheryl Rofer
Betty Cracker
My favorite line from the indictment:
Please FSM let the Biden team seize on this as an occasion to announce their intention to address our white collar crime wave. It was bad before Trump took office. It’s completely out of control since.
rikyrah
Bannon arrested.
BWA HA AH HA HA HA AH AH AH
germy
Ken
@Cheryl Rofer: That could put quite a crimp in Trump’s speeches at next week’s convention.
Kay
@TS (the original):
They’re actually very powerful federal police. They monitor fraud and theft in post offices – employee misconduct- but their mandate is much, much broader than that as far as law enforcement. It doesn’t go into operations though- they wouldn’t have anything to do with decisions to dismantle machinary or send mail all over hell before delivering it.
germy
@Cheryl Rofer: And a judge ruled trump has to provide a DNA sample in that lawsuit.
Chris Johnson
@Cheryl Rofer:
This! Trade up! Trade up! Sell ’em out, Steve, they’re assholes and you know it!
Cheryl Rofer
@Betty Cracker: Won’t happen today, with Biden’s acceptance speech tonight. Maybe insert a line there?
Ken
@TS (the original): It would be a stretch, since their remit is for fraudulent use of the mail. Then again, they got Capone for tax evasion.
Cheryl Rofer
@Ken: Or his attempted spoiler speech today in Scranton.
MattF
@Ken: I doubt it. Flag-humping is not just for show— he’s demanded that the flag sign an NDA.
Edmund Dantes
Huh… I thought ripping off the rubes was an allowed thing or there a lot of right wing grifters that are nervous this week? Cause there are a lot where they take in a ton of money but 5% or 10% go to the mission and the rest goes to more fundraising that happens to be owned by the head of the grift.
germy
Now I could go try and tell a trump supporter about this, but the response would just be “the deep state is targeting his people on bogus charges” etc., so what’s the point?
Immanentize
Although Bannon is getting most of the attention — Kolfage is a first tier, primo, jackass.
ETA. I guess we now know some of the reasons Barr wanted to fuck with the SDNY. Keep the reasons coming. One indictment a week ought to do it.
Kay
@TS (the original):
They have a kind of checkered history. They had a mandate to investigate and bust people for pornography thru the mail back when that was illegal and they used it to target gay people, specifically. Bust them, out them, and get them fired. They were also used by the authoritarian Right in the “red scares”, because Lefties communicated thru the mail back in the day.
TomatoQueen
Yay. Yay. Yay.
Now do Miller.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It’s probably not helping matters for the Republicans ether that their billionaire marks are starting wake up they are being played.
Ken
“But that would take years!”
“Decades.”
TS (the original)
@Kay: Thanks for the info – Trump as president* is certainly adding to my education.
@Ken: Thanks also.
Gin & Tonic
@germy: I’ve forgotten – how many of Obama’s campaign managers were arrested or convicted?
Immanentize
@Ken: I’m patient that way.
Jeffro
This is ‘the’ Steve Bannon? Wow.
And the judge threw out trumpov’s request to keep hiding his tax returns?
And he’s going to have to produce a DNA sample after all? (jesus – my apologies to the poor lab tech who has to handle that, even with gloves)
Wow wow wow.
A Ghost to Most
It’s about damn time Bannon has HIS time in the barrel.
Kay
@germy:
That’s the true Trump supporters. The educated, wealthier Trump supporters (and there are a LOT of them) adopt this jeering, ultra sophisticated “they’re all corrupt and he’s good for the economy” which in many ways is more offensive. It’s a lack of character. They’re bad people. The marks of the grift may or may not be bad people but the sophisticated Trumpsters definitely are. It’s a straight transaction. Jailed 4 year olds for a 2300 dollar tax cut.
Ken
@Kay: The USPIS, specifically the Comstock Division, also seizes magical tomes being sent through the mail. They have a whole division of computational demonologists to analyze the spells and deploys counter-measures.
I’m sorry, I’m being informed that this is only in Charles Stross’s Laundry Files novels.
Cheryl Rofer
Gotta take the kitties out – will be back in a bit.
Ken
Speaking of which, has the US actually done anything about moving the embassy to Jerusalem beyond maybe a P.O. box?
BlueDWarrior
@Jeffro: Boy, it'[s not even 10:30 EDT and all that’s happened to him already. I bet he’s screaming a storm at some poor intern as we post.
TS (the original)
Looks like trump will be screaming at Barr today about why he didn’t stop this investigation.
germy
In the report that came out a few days ago on the 2016 election, I saw a quote of Bannon’s testimony: “Don, jr. is someone who believes everything he reads in Breitbart.”
So will Bannon start babbling truths to save his skin? He doesn’t seem the type to keep his mouth shut.
germy
Aleta
Laurence Tribe @tribelaw
Very bad news for Trump: Here’s Judge Marrero’s decision tossing out Trump’s remaining attacks on the Vance subpoenas demanding Trump’s financial data, including the tax returns. Those attacks are baseless. The court was right to reject them.
BlueDWarrior
@germy: What in him is stronger, the urge the keep the grift going, or the urge to see the government continued to be dismantled by the Orange Wrecking Ball?
MattF
@Cheryl Rofer: Not amusing that it always gets to sex trafficking. I’m not gonna even think about the Satanism, etc.
germy
So many of the people who yelled “Lock her up!” in 2016 are often in custody themselves nowadays.
Gin & Tonic
@germy: Somehow I can see Manafort maintaining omertà, but can easily envision Bannon singing like a canary.
Eolirin
@Jeffro: Willing to bet Trump refuses to provide the DNA test, and what’s the judge going to do?
Mike in NC
@TomatoQueen: There’s probably a zero percent chance that Miller doesn’t have a briefcase stuffed with kiddie porn.
Jamey
@germy: This is a major collar for US Attorneys.
Jamey
@Mike in NC: And/or kiddie parts.
OGLiberal
Pretty certain Kolfage has been involved in a lot of scams but never got in real trouble and people have been saying for quite some times that his wall campaign was just another grift.
Immanentize
@Cheryl Rofer: That’s because the butterfly center pretty effectively opposed his wall.
Kay
@Cheryl Rofer:
I continue to wonder when QAnon will succeed in bothering a sufficient number of normal people to cause a public backlash. It’s like the virus- 2 x 2, 4 x 2, 8 x 2. That is going to happen.
germy
I predict his lawyers will say “Please release my client, he’s at risk for covid if he stays in jail…”
TaMara (HFG)
This gave me a smile this a.m.
germy
Immanentize
@germy: As Mel Brooks said,
“We mock the things we are to become.”
Immanentize
@Eolirin: what is done to all other such people +- issue an order to have it taken by a certain date with plaintiff counsel present. And if he still refuses, he loses the lawsuit.
dww44
O/TConor Lamb is on CNN talking about how at his last fall’s Town Halls no one asked him about impeachment that people were tired of negative campaigning on both sides …,,,, Not a strong Dem, is he?
Geminid
@Kay: When Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger (Va7th) applied for a job with the CIA, it took a while to get her security clearance, and she worked for the USPIS in the interim.
Immanentize
@dww44: he is a very strong Dem for his district. We are the big tent party.
OGLiberal
@Kay: It’s a shame that Wilford Brimley passed away recently. If he hadn’t and if Bannon and Kolfage decided to play hardball they could have brought him in to make them crack a la the way he did with Kramer.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
The whole right wing media machine is a propaganda service designed to feed people on bullshit, and once you’ve found the people who will accept it as content, you’ve also found ones who will accept it as ads. It’s no wonder they’re funded by the worst kind of con men and snake oil salesmen. And once you’ve accepted that you’re going to surround yourself with those kinds of people, it’s very hard to keep the people inside the party apparatus proper from grifting. It’s really toxic, and it makes me glad the Democrats have never succeeded in building up the same kind of propaganda network.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
I can’t count that low.
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Cost of doing business.
The billionaires don’t mind that people are getting a small cut, as long as they get a much bigger one. After all a lot of the money is coming from the rubes a bit at a time and it convinces the rubes to continue to be rubes and buy the bullshit.
Jinchi
How’d they find out they might be under investigation?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Keystone
CopsGriftersJonas
Has any president ever held the signal distinction of having *both* his campaign managers indicted on federal charges?
The best people. The best.
M31
That Doonesbury GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY panel is going to get a workout
Kay
@Geminid:
They’re huge in illegal drug interdiction and money laundering and they work with all the other federal police agencies. It’s a “hook” in a way because if it lands in the mail or goes thru the mail they can get involved, and almost everything does, in some way, eventually.
Another Scott
OhPleaseOhPleaseOhPleaseOhPlease…
(via LOLGOP)
Cheers,
Scott.
Immanentize
@Jinchi: Grand jury witnesses and maybe even a target letter to Kolfage? Just FYI — Grand jurors cannot talk about what happens in the grand jury, but witnesses can unless there is a specific gag order. But all witnesses are strongly encouraged not to talk — like verbally ordered without the court order.
Kay
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
That’s wonderful. I was hoping it would scoop up a bunch of them.
Jonas
Good god. That’s looks like the board of Stupid Theranos.
Delk
Bannon in custody? Hoo boy I bet he is going through withdrawals. I’m sure he’s rank, sweaty, and trembling with dry heaves.
Immanentize
@Another Scott: I love the smell of Kobach indicted in the morning…. Let it be!
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Yeah, you don’t mess with the postal inspectors. They have a narrow jurisdiction, but they are very vigorous in investigating within it. There’s a reason mail fraud is a common charge for people engaged in complex financial crimes. ISTR that the postal inspectors are also frequently called in as an unrelated agency when it’s necessary to investigate other federal law enforcement.
mrmoshpotato
I come in here off of a monkey story and read “an alleged monkey-laundering grifting ring this morning. Oops.
Jinchi
@Another Scott: I realize I’m getting distracted from the big picture here, but the advisory board lists him as “Sheriff” David Clark.
Why the quotes? Is Clark not really a sheriff?
germy
@mrmoshpotato: They would have gotten away with it, too. But the damn monkeys raise holy hell when you try to shampoo them.
Mousebumples
@Jinchi: Former Milwaukee County Sheriff.
Jinchi
@Jonas: I think you mean stupider Theranos.
Ken
@Jinchi: The indictment says “from a financial institution,” but doesn’t say which institution. I have no idea if a bank is required, or forbidden, to inform a customer that their accounts may be under investigation.
Kay
The funniest part of the GOP embrace of grifters is it doesn’t matter at all if GOP’ers are elected for the grifts to be wildly profitable. They’ll make as much building the imaginary wall as they will “stopping the criminal Democrat in the White House”. It might be better for the grifters if Republicans lose, really- they win either way as far as milking the base.
mrmoshpotato
Haha, yes. I remember that GoFundMe. Buncha Trump trash donated millions. Idiots.
zhena gogolia
Oh, so now Tom Nichols realizes how great Barack Obama is. Real quick on the uptake, aren’t we.
Ruckus
@Jinchi:
If I remember correctly his jurisdiction was the county jail. Nothing more. But he acts tough as if he sheriff of county that comprises a third of a state and it’s population.
Eolirin
@Immanentize: Losing the lawsuit is better than having DNA evidence of rape right?
germy
@Jinchi:
This is a good question.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
The Aristocrats!
Gin & Tonic
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Wow, that’s like the Derp Hall of Fame.
Ken
@Kay: Weren’t some of the NRA’s money woes because donations cratered after the Republicans took over in 2017? They couldn’t use the “government coming for your guns” argument as effectively.
dww44
@Immanentize: I understand, but I live in a red state that used to elect white male dems who tried to always straddle the fence by bring wishy washy about their party bona fides. By 2010 they were all gone. They do not exist any longer.
When you waffle as he did in that interview you please no one. There’s a difference between being a strong Democrat who does not equivocate and one who backs away from supporting his party’s impeachment of Trump in an attempt to assuage his constituents who support him.
Amir Khalid
@Jinchi:
Is Sheriff Clark that wackaloon who decorated his uniform with shiny things from a cereal box and the Harley Davidson merch store?
mrmoshpotato
@steppy: Just how hopped up on caffeine is everyone in this bastard administration? So. Many.
PoolCoffeeboys!I guess you need to caffeinated to the hilt to do soooooo much criming.
Roger Moore
@Jeffro:
He’s going to keep fighting it as long as he possibly can. I’m certain he can postpone any actual need to provide a sample until after the election.
Jinchi
@M31:
piratedan
getting ready for another day dealing with the duality of political reporters and the DNC, when the Dems speak, these guys are suddenly voters and happy to express why those appeals and statements didn’t reach their lofty abodes that enclose their true selves and when they cover the GOP they evolve into opinionless stenographers where they faithfully report every utterance context free.
Jinchi
@Amir Khalid: Yes. That’s him.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
Democrats do have grifters, though. My sense just as a volunteer was the grifter cohort was growing very fast and were big during the Bush years, culminating with the Kerry campaign, which has a lot of useless “orgs” attached and running around and not doing shit.
This is my personal theory but I think that’s part of the reason Obama pissed off long term Democratic operatives and they often seemed so bitter- he took most of it in-house and skipped the orgs. It was smart and IMO it cleared out some of the skimming that had accumulated.
You have to be vigilant. There is a TON of money sloshing around and no one really checks their work. That’s why I hector on looking at SPENDING as much as RAISING. How they spend it as or more important than how they raise it, or how much they raise.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
Yes, yes he is. His total duty was to run the county jail. Every sq in of the county is also the city and the Milwaukee city police did all law enforcement other than run the county jail.
sanjeevs
Their advisory board is a real GOP dream team
Kris Kobach, Erik Prince, Tom Tancredo, Sheriff David Clarke, Curt Schilling …
https://webuildthewall.us/ourteam/#
Eolirin
@Roger Moore: If he can’t he just won’t provide the sample. Losing a defamation lawsuit on technical grounds while still being able to claim innocence and argue process won’t hurt him with his base, probably helps even. Losing a defamation lawsuit because the plaintiff is able to show hard evidence suggesting rape might peel off a few people.
Llelldorin
@Ken: I have to give Trump credit for one thing—I might never have read the Laundry Files if Krugman hadn’t referred to Trump as CASE NIGHTMARE ORANGE.
Roger Moore
@Eolirin:
Enter a default judgment against him. He’s obligated to provide the evidence, and if he doesn’t it can be assumed to be proof he knows it would be detrimental to his case.
mrmoshpotato
@Jeffro: It’s like it’s all of our birthdays!
(I gave the Cubs the day off. Go Tigers!)
mrmoshpotato
@Cheryl Rofer: I need to know more about this alleged butterfly sex trafficking. How can butterflies even be sex trafficked?
More nuts than a squirrel convention.
Punchy
Myfuckinggod that’s just an incredible olio of a shitpile of a dumpster fire of rejects, clowns, assholes, and criminals.
Rand Careaga
@TS (the original): Forty years ago I appeared as a witness in a pretrial hearing in a mail-related prosecution (my then-job was not with the Postal Service, but it was, so to say, postal-adjacent). I spent an hour with a couple of postal inspectors at the DA’s office. At one point they were at pains to ask me to omit a certain element in my testimony. “I can do that,” I said, “but suppose the attorney asks me about that specifically?”
The prosecutor cradled his fingers and gave me a meaningful look. “Well,” he said, “We can’t tell you to deny it.” (Nudge, nudge; wink, wink.)
In the event, the question was indeed asked of me on the stand. Watergate, at that time, was still a vivid memory, and I remember thinking that if some of Nixon’s senior henchmen wound up doing hard time covering for the President of the United States, I was not going to perjure myself for the convenience of the Assistant District Attorney of Solano County. I answered truthfully. “And why,” thundered the defense attorney, “didn’t you mention this earlier?’
I could have pointed at the prosecutor and said “Because that gentleman and the nice postal inspectors asked me not to,” but this would have been impolitic, and instead I responded, also truthfully, “Because you did not ask me about this until just now.”
(These days I’m married to an attorney. She tells her clients “If opposing counsel asks if you know what time it is, you do not answer ‘it’s 1:30.’ You answer yes or no as the case may be.”)
Roger Moore
@Eolirin:
I remember back in the ’90s that at least one pundit suggested Clinton should have just allowed a default judgment in the Paula Jones case. He should have said “it’s a nuisance case I don’t have time to fight, so I’m just going to pay the default judgment”. It would have looked bad, but in the long run it would have been better for him than fighting was.
oatler.
Betcha Mueller is shouting “D’oh!”
Immanentize
@Eolirin: yes. But the criminal prosecution for a “rape” would be almost impossible at this point.
ETA The lawsuit is for defamation — Trump saying it never happened.
Jinchi
My guess is he’ll have Eric Trump submit one for him, because that’s the type of genius move he’d make.
JPL
Boaters for trump lost one of their own. Kolfage has to give back his boat.
mrmoshpotato
@TaMara (HFG): Stephen K. Bannon Will You Please Go To Jail Now by Dr. Seuss
Stamp yourself and go to jail!
The Moar You Know
@Delk: huh I’m not the only one who had that thought. Great minds and all that I guess!
mrmoshpotato
@JPL: He won’t be boating on any river of liberal tears. SAD!
SFAW
According to TPM, the Murderer-in-Chief’s latest effort to block release of his tax returns has been rejected by the Federal judge in charge of the case. I hope it’s the last of those attempts, but I also hope for a golden-egg-laying unicorn to appear in my yard.
Another Scott
@JPL:
Cheers,
Scott.
JPL
NEW: Law enforcement source tells
@NBCNewYork
Steve Bannon was arrested this morning on board a boat off the coast of Westbrook, CT ? ? ? ? ? ?
JPL
@Another Scott:? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? It keeps getting better.
Amir Khalid
@Jinchi:
Isn’t he required to provide the sample in front of a witness*, to avoid just that sort of deception?
*If so, I pity the designated witness.
JPL
From Kyle Griffin
Just noted on
@MSNBC
: Kris Kobach told the NYT in 2019 that Trump supported this ‘We Build the Wall’ effort. Kobach was quoted as saying that the president said this project has my blessing and you can tell that to the media.
Jinchi
Please tell me he was part of Trump’s “Spanish Armada”.
mrmoshpotato
@germy: ?or giving a monkey a shower?
The Moar You Know
@Amir Khalid: It’s a cheek swab.
mrmoshpotato
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: The Trumptrashocrats!
JPL
I guess Bannon won’t be speaking at the Republican Convention. sad
Steeplejack
@germy:
Same.
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid: And dips his beard in ink.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: A DNA sample can be just a cheek swab. Put away your impure thoughts.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Trigger warning: brain bleach might be needed if you read past his point.
Were he ever actually to provide a specimen, he’ll probably tell the nurse (or whomever) that he needs an extra-large specimen vial.
And, of course, in the end he’d only be able to provide half an eye-dropper, if that. (Although the eye-dropper might be to big for him to fit into.
ETA: And G&T and Moar take all the “fun” out of Amir’s speculation.
Amir Khalid
@The Moar You Know:
Thank you for spoiling my lurid fantasy. Pout.
scav
Umm, could it be possible that it’s going to be reaallllyyy difficult to get a sample of DNA off of Trump? How far down does the orange stuff go? Legally, does a spectroscopic chemical analysis substitute for a DNA one?
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
I did my best to support you.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ruckus: I gather a lot of those Billionaire donars are paying to have some Federal law finagled the way they want. It’s really hard to believe anyone in the Trump admin is capable of something like that. I get the impression from things like that story about Adelson that he forks over a pile money, nothing happens and then Trump calls him and complains why Adelson isn’t donating more.
Ken
This is where we confirm that Trump’s daily “covid tests” have been fake, since there’s no way he’d let anyone stick a swab in his nose.
MisterForkbeard
Speaking of grifters, I see that Tucker Carlson got Sarah Palin to call Harris a prostitute within 2 hours of Harris’ nomination.
Gonna be a dirty campaign. We knew it, but… ick.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SFAW:
How high can he appeal this? This is all state courts, right? The NYS-SC
ETA: i wonder what the value of Harris using this, if she goes on the attack: “He’s a fraud. Bank fraud. Insurance fraud. Tax fraud. Successful business people don’t need to lie. Smart deal-makers don’t need to file lawsuit after lawsuit to hide their records.” I suspect half his supporters just think everybody does, and the other half think that, as he said in a debate, cheating means he’s smart. And “tough”.
PPCLI
Ah memories…. Remember when Trump put Bannon on the National Security Council principals committee?
(He he lasted several months there until he got dumped, apparently after an in-house knife fight with the Kushner cabal.)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Amir Khalid: If it’s anything like the urine samples, you have to empty your pockets, go into a room that is locked behind you. Produce the sample, put it in a locked box.
Jinchi
Don’t give up. Someone still has to tell Trump that it’s a cheek swab. If she’s not quick enough, the witness might find herself in a Stefanie Clifford situation.
Ken
@JPL: Once the SDNY gets their hands on the real set of books, they’re going to find payments to Trump, aren’t they?
mrmoshpotato
@MisterForkbeard: Doesn’t she have to take Trig, Track, and Field mooseback riding or something?
Gin & Tonic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Today’s ruling was by a Federal judge, so for some reason this is not exclusively a state matter. The reasons for that escape me, as IANAL.
Kristine
@Cheryl Rofer: Yup. Made me smile.
Jinchi
@Ken: Why would there be a real set of books?
SiubhanDuinne
@sanjeevs: I went to Schilling’s Wikipedia page. His bio includes this lovely tidbit:
As the saying goes, I did Nazi that coming!
Immanentize
@JPL:
I’m on a BOAT!!!
Frankensteinbeck
@Jinchi:
I was thinking that providing someone else’s sample would be typically Trump. He has a long history of lying about his identity and providing fake evidence.
TaMara (HFG)
OMG, who had 9:30 a.m. MDT for Trump disavowing knowing Bannon? Please collect your prize at the door.
scav
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The Russians — certainly the sporting types — have form in defeating those sort of samples, don’t they?
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic:
Not even noon on the east coast.
SiubhanDuinne
@mrmoshpotato:
? It was pollination, I know… ??
Ken
@Jinchi: All right, the books that Kolfage showed to Bannon, or maybe the set he showed to the Board of Grifters.
BruceFromOhio
@germy: Drummers for Spinal Tap.
Kropacetic
Apparently there’s a kid’s show based on the USPIS. I’ve never seen it but it was discussed in a video essay I watched (forget whether it was discussing kid’s shows or police shows).
Ken
@SiubhanDuinne: “I’m not a Nazi, I just get sexually aroused by the paraphernalia and the Hugo Boss designs.”
Wapiti
@Kay: Some people believe that we need religion to keep people from doing bad things. I think that’s mostly projection. Plenty of good religious people don’t trot that out as a reason for religion, and there are plenty of moral agnostics and atheists.
But it ties directly to Republican thought.
mrmoshpotato
@TaMara (HFG): Damn. Off by an hour – I had 10:30 CDT.
MisterForkbeard
@Eolirin: Does anyone know if there’s a date attached to the current requirement for the DNA sample? It’s not like it’s particularly onerous to the president to do – they can have the white house doctor do a blood draw or whatever.
Assuming you can trust the white house to not just send a completely different DNA sample.
Kropacetic
Well, there is that one bone in the ear. The smallest one in my body, yet I can’t help but listen to it.
JPL
@TaMara (HFG): He doesn’t know any one, I guess including the so called sheriff and Kris Kobach
WHITE HOUSE STATEMENT: “President Trump has not been involved with Steve Bannon since the campaign and the early part of the Administration, and he does not know the people involved with this project.”
Kropacetic
They could take a hair sample, but then the DNA test would show the President is actually a rare blonde ferret.
Ken
@JPL: Oh yeah, there’s gonna be cancelled checks with Kolfage’s and Bannon’s signatures, payable to Trump, dated this year.
PPCLI
@JPL:
“…he does not know the people involved with this project.”
He doesn’t know Kris Kobach, the general counsel for this conspiracy of grifters? Or Eric Prince, on the advisory committee? …
mrmoshpotato
@Kropacetic:
Or discussing kids’ police shows.
Also, Hot Ice
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@scav: Our analysts shows President Trump having the body of a a twenty three year old female dancer from Minsk,..
Kropacetic
Give Trump a break. His memory ain’t what it used to be.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
trump talking on my muted TV, no sign of “witch hunt” in the chyron yet
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Not a lawyer, etc etc but:
A) The ruling being appealed was by a Federal Judge. I think Vance is also US (as opposed to NYS), but not sure.
B) As an FYI, in New York, the “Supreme Court” is actually the lowest rung on the judiciary. Or, at least, it used to be, lo these many years ago when I lived there.
Ladyraxterinok
@Kay: @Kay:
Clarence Buddington Kelland, who wrote Scattergood Baines and the Mark Tidd series for boys, also wrote detective stories. At least one was about a detective who worked for the Postal Service detective division. That’s where I learned there was such an outfit
patrick II
@Jinchi:
From the SDNY to Barr to Trump would be the flow of information under normal circumstances. There might have been a leak lower down, but we know Barr knew (and he had already tried to fire the SDNY) and if he knew so did Trump. So, asking Bannon who told him he was under investigation might be very interesting.
SiubhanDuinne
@Rand Careaga: Not for the first time, I am struck by the fact that, among them, Shakespeare, Gilbert & Sullivan, and Dorothy L. Sayers can always provide an apt quote. This, from Clouds of Witness (DLS):
Kropacetic
@mrmoshpotato: God, I had completely forgotten that movie.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ah, Dump-watching via chyron. Sooper Jeansius!
JPL
@PPCLI: No one. I just saw a clip where he said that he thought they were just showboating and wasn’t involved. Don Jr. had a fundraising drive with them last year.
Also.. Obama administration had lots of scandals.
mrmoshpotato
@Kropacetic: Ummm….sorry for reminding you? Need a The Sandlot brain cleanser?
patrick II
@Another Scott:
It is too bad Kobach didn’t win the Republican primary in Kansas.
Kropacetic
Remember that time he used slightly-better-than-the-cheapest mustard?
:: indignant harrumphing ::
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL: Dear god. At this point, any editor worth their salt would step in and say “Either you have to be more subtle, or you mean your book to be comic.”
Leto
@Kropacetic:
“Sir, this specimen’s DNA includes codes not found anywhere in the natural world… where was this sample taken from? What does this mean?!?!”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Amir Khalid: Can’t they just take a cheek swab? Or have I been watching too many cop shows. There they just give the guy a drink to hold and take the sample from the glass.
Kropacetic
@mrmoshpotato: I actually loved both those movies when I was a kid. The Sandlot had a more sticking power in my brain, though. For Rookie of the Year, I remember little more than the basic premise.
JPL
Here’s the clip of trump saying but President Obama Aaron Rupar
Leto
@JPL:
Click the link for the postal boat. Amazing…
Amir Khalid
@SiubhanDuinne:
I had an editor who was fascinated with militaria and also collected Third Reich memorabilia. (He was that not very common thing, a partly white Malaysian, with an Irish surname.) I do not remember him fondly.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Uh huh.
Uh huh.
mrmoshpotato
@JPL: Can’t spell “scandal” without two “a”s and the silent “o-b-m.”
Jeffro
@TaMara (HFG): it’s great that he feels badly for Steve Bannon, just like he wished Ghislane Maxwell all the best.
I would double-dog-dare the national snooze media to “both sides” that somehow with Biden,, but I have no doubt they are already in the process of doing so.
Tell that transition team of yours to shift into ludicrous speed, Uncle Joe!
Leto
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Well they could take a hair sample but they’re afraid the thing on top of his head will attack them in self-defense.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Can I ask how you know that?
TheronWare
On the next episode of “American Greed”…..
mrmoshpotato
@Kropacetic: That’s all I remember from Rookie of the Year.
Babe Ruth. Who was she?
Kay
Good Lord:
The low quality Trump hires now spend more time and energy hiding that they fucked up the mail than it would take to actually deliver it. They’re moving it to hide it, but not delivering it. I swear to God it would be easier to at this point to just bring it to people.
Lyrebird
@TS (the original): I don’t know, but I love how they got a special shout-out on this case!!!
Martin
Don’t kink shame.
Ken
@Leto: Brain slugs are normally passive.
JPL
@Leto: That is amazing .
Immanentize
@Frankensteinbeck: That would be where Mary Trump’s sample would come into play.
mrmoshpotato
@Leto: How long is DNA viable from a long-dead animal that’s been atop a toxic waste spill for decades?
Ken
@mrmoshpotato: Sounds like you’ve found the plot for Jurassic World 4, assuming anyone survives filming the third installment.
Elizabelle
@JPL: Trump’s flat top hair.
He is really looking like a Dick Tracy villain these days. Someone should do some memes with the Dick Tracy crooks. They were mostly very ugly people, and — look at the people Trump surrounds himself with.
Kay
Now we understand the weird obsession with boat parades. It was The Wall grifters.
Immanentize
@MisterForkbeard:
Only need a cheek swab. Really non-intrusive.
Jonas
@OGLiberal: Lol. With everything going on with the USPS and Wilford Brimley passing recently, I’ve also chuckled a couple of times recalling his hilarious turn as the postmaster general in that Seinfeld episode. The part at the end when they bring in Newman with a bucket on his head begging “tell my story!” always slays me.
trnc
Building an unneeded wall? Billions in wasted taxpayer money. Defrauding hundreds of thousands of MAGA donors? Priceless.
Immanentize
Not quick enough — grading papers too.
Ken
@Immanentize: As a niece, Mary would have 25% relatedness to Trump. One of the sons would be better at 50%.
Of course with these lazy 2020 writers, Trump would send off Don Jr.’s sample, and find out that they’re not related…
mrmoshpotato
@Ken: Ugh. I checked out after Jurassic Park III. Should’ve left after Lost World.
Oops! T Rex rampaging through San Diego!
Kay
This is the We Build the Wall site. It’s filled with endorsements from prominent Republicans. One of the Trump sons says it’s “private enterprise at its finest”
H.E.Wolf
Nor did we, until our alert neighbor called in a report on some mail thieves earlier this year (the thieves were fishing envelopes out of a USPS blue mailbox on the corner, and taking them to a van parked nearby).
USPIS showed up almost before our neighbor hung up the phone, apprehended the thieves, and impounded the van.
It had some sad aspects: the thieves were a white man straight out of a Dick Tracy cartoon villain lineup, a cowed-looking woman, and her tiny dog. I was concerned for the wellbeing of the latter two. [ETA: because they might have been in an abusive relationship with the man.]
Eunicecycle
@Kay: I think there was a Seinfeld episode where Newman was too lazy to complete his route so he had stacks of mail bags in a storage locker. Jerry subbed on his route and outed the scheme because people were actually getting their mail.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elizabelle:
that is so perfect, i can’t believe it’s the first time I’ve seen it.
Last night I thought his skin looked particularly mottled yesterday. Hard to say what might be health or bad make up with him
mrmoshpotato
@Immanentize: Which cheeks? (Sorry not sorry.)
WereBear
Bela Lugosi made a film called Postal Inspectors.
Leto
@Ken: Wait, you mean it’s not Fizzgig from the Dark Crystal? They bare an uncanny resemblance…
@JPL: Right??? Man, I bet they were all clamoring for a chance to be in on that raid.
@mrmoshpotato: Hmmm… I wonder if viability is tied to subjects color. Started off as blonde (healthy) but as the subject has been slowly poisoned over the decades, it’s shifted in hue to a transparent blonde/orange appearance. I’m sure some excited/eager xenobiologists will want to study this.
Kropacetic
I liked Jurassic World better than the other sequels. Haven’t seen the second Jurassic World, though I heard bad things.
sdhays
@MisterForkbeard: I actually find that comforting. The quote I heard from her when Harris was announced was actually gracious and kind. It was as if the world was upside down (and I was driving, so it was scary there for a minute!).
Steeplejack (phone)
@Another Scott:
Hilarious comments in that thread.
Kay
The “corporate documents” page has ONE document. The letter from the IRS giving them nonprofit status.
Aleta
BuildaWall (//) reportedly took in 25$ million. Must be a lot of unreported transactions too….
Immanentize
@Ken: Actually, Mary ought to have about 40% of Trump’s unique DNA (Trump and Fred are brothers, children of Fred would have just less than 1/2 of Trump’s DNA or slightly more, assuming Fred and Donald had the same parents). This is how they catch rapists these days. Look for relatives in the data base.
Roger Moore
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
In a lot of cases, though, it’s a regulation that needs to be changed rather than a statute, and there’s ample evidence for the Trump administration’s willingness and ability to get rid of unwanted regulations. In other cases, all that might be needed is for an agency to look the other way or to be gutted, other things the Trump administration has been distressingly effective at.
Eunicecycle
@Kay: I am not a lawyer but worked in non-profits for many years. It seems their board members should have some liability for not showing oversight on how the organization was spending the money.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
on MSNBC: Gene Robinson, with his usual avuncular chuckle, stomps on Kristen Welker’s faux-wide-eyed “President Obama really breaking with tradition in attacking his successor….”
Robinson: “Give me a break…”
Kay
The guy who bought the boat with the wall money was still Tweeting on August 18th.
All the responses are from QAnon people. You can tell because the QAnon cult claim there are 800k kids a year who go missing in the US. Always 800k.
Leto
@Aleta: BuildaWall, Build-a-Bears less successful spin off franchise /s
trnc
@germy: That tweet seems to have been removed and replaced with this one.
https://twitter.com/pbump/status/1296466853565472769
Kropacetic
The summary of donations and donors at the bottom is weird. It ticks up like it’s actively tracking; but then arrives at a bunch of round numbers, which would be improbable if the former were true.
Mary G
WaPo says you guys called it:
Trump calling somebody else a showboater is rich.
Baud
Out: NCIS.
In: USPIS.
Immanentize
@Eunicecycle: mostly civil, not criminal. Believe me the lawsuits by donors are being filed as we speak.
sanjeevs
How bad are things at the FBI that SDNY felt they had to use USPS to investigate this
Leto
@Immanentize: It’s part of the way they caught the Golden State Killer. I don’t know if you saw the HBO mini-series, “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” but they spoke quite a bit about that (how they utilize DNA to catch people, but also just how far the technology has come).
Kay
@Eunicecycle:
I don’t think “nonprofit” means anything anymore, other than as an IRS status. I think people assume it’s some kind of stamp of approval and it’s really not. If individual nonprofits are on the up and up, that is solely due to the personal ethics of the people leading the organization. It isn’t because they’re regulated or examined.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The successor who says Obama should be criminally investigated? That successor?
Gene is right. Gimme a break.
zhena gogolia
@JPL:
Oh, God, that’s too close for comfort.
Ken
@Kay: Huh, I thought New York corporations were supposed to have more records. Wasn’t there a prominent case recently, some phony charitable foundation that got broken up because they’d never had an outside audit or complied with any of the other requirements? Hang on, the name will come to me, “T”-something….
WaterGirl
@JPL: Me thinks he doth protest too much!
Kay
@Baud:
The postal service finally gets its due!
The first thing I read on Balloon Juice was a John Cole love letter to the post office. A long term supporter, Mr. Cole :)
JPL
@Eunicecycle: Follow the money. It might not be over, but they are hoping one of those arrested will share more info. I’ve watched a lot of crime shows on tv, so at this point, I’m still not an expert.
Raven
We’re down at the beach Kolfage lives here. The local blog is feeling sorry for the trumpers who got scammed!!!11
Richard Grant
Any editorial cartoonist who does not rush to depict Steve Bannon in a red-and-white striped shirt, red-and-white knit cap, and glasses is missing an opportunity.
Leto
@Mary G:
That’s exactly the conservative mantra I’ve read/heard for the past 40+ years… Donald Trumpov, the conservative’s conservative.
Raven
@Another Scott: leading a boat parade no doubt!
Baud
@Kay:
At least we now know who are army will be if Trump barricades himself in the White House after he loses.
Ken
@Mary G: My prediction: By the end of the day, someone will have unearthed Trump tweets contradicting every claim Trump made in that article.
Kropacetic
It certainly isn’t a simple thing with few to no moving parts, like healthcare is.
Immanentize
@Leto: I did not see the series, but I knew that’s how they got him. My cousin worked a bit on that case at the FBI
Baud
@Mary G:
Unlike Trump.
The Moar You Know
“I feel very badly. I haven’t been dealing with him for a very long period of time,”
I hear the guy makes a hell of a latte.
How’s the underside of the bus looking, Steve-O? Any oil leaks or anything?
Ken
Or the Postal Service.
Kay
@Ken:
I’ve been involved with probably ten of them over the years of 4 kids thru public schools and I have never had to provide anything to anyone other than the tax preparer and the information I give the tax preparer comes off the spreadsheet I made so…I mean, I didn’t steal the band funds but it’s not like anyone was watching. Not even bank statements. Just the numbers I entered.
Maybe it’s different for bigger orgs.
germy
Trump today claims he didn’t like the project when he heard about it. “It sounded like showboating.”
But then
Aleta
@Leto: better look into Build-a-Bear, its appearance is just too innocent
germy
mrmoshpotato
@Raven:
As the saying goes, “Trump trash and their money are soon parted by grifting Trump trash that wants to build a stupid fuckin’ wall. SAD! Fuck ’em!”
Eunicecycle
@Kay: I know you are right about that. I guess I always worked at good organizations that tried mightily to do the right thing and honestly fill out the 990 every year. In my last year the IRS had made some changes that were a real PITA. I was glad I was retiring. I always wondered how the scammy NPs got away with filing a false 990.
Ken
That’s like watching a nature documentary and feeling sorry for the beetles that get eaten by the chameleon. That’s their role in the circle of grift.
MomSense
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
This makes me so fucking happy. I hope they all end up in jail.
Leto
@Immanentize: Wow, cool! If you get a chance to watch it, do. It was really good.
@Ken: Or Education.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Some companies idea of new hire screening is a credit check and drug test.
Kay
@germy:
They’ll probably pull the page down but they all endorsed it. They even have a big, burly “foreman” who appears on the videos – this was an elaborate scam.
Baud
@MomSense:
This has been a good week.
Aleta
Bannon flaunted his water backdrop in the Fx interview he just gave.
Kropacetic
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Drug screening, somehow only something I’ve encountered for low-level jobs with the least responsibility.
Peale
@Dorothy A. Winsor: For all we know, the reason they are being arrested is because they refused to give him his cut.
Kay
Some news org should find the “foreman”- he’s the star of the videos. Unless he has already fled. Now HIM you could probably flip.
We’ll find out he’s a DC lawyer wearing a hard hat.
satby
@Kay:
That’s not correct, though requirements vary by state and some states are pretty lax.
laura
@Gin & Tonic: beloved commenter Amir Khalid and his impure thoughts will always be welcome to come sit 6 feet next to me!
mrmoshpotato
@Kropacetic: Yup. A stupid wall can’t be built in two weeks at a fraction of the cost and be the most tremendous in the world, or whatever bullshit Dump promised about healthcare.
Kropacetic
@mrmoshpotato: No one ever knew how complicated walls could be…
Raven
Apparently he lost both legs and an arm in Iraq. @Ken:
Aleta
@Raven: One small scam for donors, one giant scam for voters.
mrmoshpotato
@Aleta: And those Build Your Own burger and pizza options.
Baud
Gin & Tonic
Looks like Fredo is busy throwing Steve-O under the bus. They are nothing if not loyal, these Trumps.
Aleta
@Kropacetic: No one could have predicted Wallscam wouldn’t work perfectly.
Mary G
@Raven:
Roger Moore
@Immanentize:
Nope. The original claim of about 25% (and 50% for his children) is correct. Children inherit half of each parent’s DNA. When you work through the math, that means on average siblings share 50% of their DNA*. That would mean a niece or nephew would share 50% of their parent’s 50% shared DNA or 25%.
*It really is an average. For each segment of DNA, you have a 50% chance of inheriting the same segment that your sibling did. That means you wind up with 50% identical DNA on average, but in some cases it’s a bit less and in others a bit more. This also ignores the sex chromosomes- siblings of the same sex had to inherit the same sex chromosome from their father- and the mitochondrial DNA, which all siblings share.
sdhays
@Peale: Or he forgot/wasn’t told that they had already given him his cut.
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic:
Alexa, order all the popcorn!
Ken
OK, get your bets down:
The Moar You Know
@Amir Khalid: From the music world, two guys who did this come immediately to mind; Lemmy, who you’d frankly just expect would because that’s just how he lived life, and Keith Emerson from ELP (who you would not expect at all).
artem1s
@Roger Moore:
Puts an interesting spin on why the GOPers have been so adamant about the USPS not expanding their services to provide internet coverage and banking services to the rural and urban poor.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ken: You are ignoring the probability of overlap between the categories.
LuciaMia
@Mary G: Annnnd right on time: I barely knew him, he left early…I disapproved of that project…though I knew nothing about it…did you know Obama was spying on me?
artem1s
@Gin & Tonic:
remember waaaaaay back in 2017 when Dolt45 blew a gasket over folks referring him as President Bannon. Might be time to reintroduce that hashtag to the Twitter verse.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Roger Moore:
Rose Twitter is certainly working on this. First the conspiracy theories with the grift to follow later.
Kropacetic
Then they are nothing.
Aleta
@Gin & Tonic:
Young Junior “never gave them permission to use him as a testimonial on their website and was unaware they included him”
when he cashed their checks. // joke
Yutsano
@Leto: Your slander of that noble creature Fizzgig cannot stand sir!
*drops glove*
Water pistols at dawn! Super Soakers not allowed.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kropacetic: The job I applied for was senior technician. Friend of mine is a manager at the company and she said the entire staff has to do it including management, with random tests every few months. I was so annoyed at having to go threw the test I waited until they made the job offer and blew them off.
It was big thing during the Great Recession but maybe they stopped doing it because there were all kinds of stories off people walking out of interviews when they heard “Drug Test”
Roger Moore
@Eunicecycle:
I think the conservative targeting faux scandal made the IRS really gun shy about looking too closely at non-profits. Their investigative side has been systematically starved, too. Whenever you hear that something like that isn’t been checked, it’s because the Republicans have gutted their ability to check.
Ken
Supports, stabs, toMAYto, toMAHto.
MattF
@Gin & Tonic:
So, you’re saying they are nothing…
catclub
@Cheryl Rofer: I will wait until the DA actually gets the documents before any celebration. Trump is a master at stalling the judicial system. No ruling against is final.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: After a couple of lawsuits at my workplace involving them, and some deep dives into some organizations I’ve done business with, it means a lot to me now; it’s the first red flag that you are dealing with an organization of criminals who are stealing most of the money entrusted to their care.
And sadly, that includes the largest animal shelter organization here in San Diego.
Aleta
Roger Moore
@Ken:
It’s a tough call, but I’m going with #4.
Danielx
@MisterForkbeard:
Snowbilly Snooki rides again!
JaySinWA
@Gin & Tonic:
Bragging, more likely.
catclub
I read of someone proposing cannons at dawn. and noting that on some cannons they have ‘The last argument of kings’ or the first.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Dude, the challenger doesn’t get to choose the weapons. Since Leto now has choice and knows your aversion to Super Soakers, on your own head be it. Unless, of course, you knew this and said no to Super Soakers just to get him to choose them…. But he would suspect that and not choose them. But he knows you work for the the IRS and thus are a wily foe, so he would not not chose them….
Kay
@satby:
It’s a 990 in Ohio. You register the nonprofit with the sec of state but nothing is required beyond that but the federal tax return. When the sec of state receives the tax return (and 50 dollars) they issue the state certificate. There’s no auditing process at all. If the information given to the tax preparer is garbage it’s all garbage, because it all comes off the return.
Chyron HR
@mrmoshpotato:
Gosh we sure don’t hear much about the mothers of the 170,000+ angels killed by the ‘Rona. Guess they all went to hell (for making Trump look bad).
The Moar You Know
@Raven: My Trump-loving mother gave them a fair amount of money. I don’t feel sorry for her at all. That this was a scam should have been obvious to everyone from the get go, so obvious that I don’t think the “victims” should be allowed to try to recoup their losses in court.
Ken
BTW I’m sure the schedule is set for tonight’s DNC, but I really hope someone manages to work in a line about “Wouldn’t you love being able to go through one day without something like this happening?”
MattF
@Gin & Tonic: Rick Wilson, who has excellent reasons to despise Bannon, agrees.
TerryC
@Eunicecycle: As a law student at a top school I sorted mail for the residents. Two years into it I removed a previously locked cabinet door and found hundred of undelivered letters from law firms to students from 7-8 years prior.
i wrote “undeliverable – return to sender” on each piece and put them into the mail stream.
A few days later the heavens shook with rage from postal administrators up the chain of command. All of them angry at me.
Someone, somewhere high up who was neither my boss nor in her chain of command, wrote a letter of reprimand to me for violating policies I had been trained in. I truly enjoyed the exchange of letters after I informed everyone involved via my rejection of his reprimand that no one had ever given me any training at all.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: In that case if that is all that a charity needs to do in Ohio, it is a good home for fake charities. Other states seem to have higher standards. New York seems to have come down on a couple of high profile ones over the past few years.
Kay
@Eunicecycle:
That actually happens. Except they stupidly dump the mail and then when someone finds it the addresses lead right back to the carrier.
oatler.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/infowars-correspondent-arrested-on-robbery-charge-gets-massive-donations-from-conspiracy-fans_n_5f3e88d7c5b663461581acc8
PAM Dirac
@Roger Moore:
If you want to see the the distributions for the amount of overlap for various relationships as measured by the common DNA testing companies you can find it at The Genetic Genealogist
Another Scott
@TerryC: Nice. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Is either one of them Sicilian? Could be important.
The Moar You Know
@catclub: the phrase would have been “Ultima Ratio Regum”
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack (phone): Inconceivable!
Roger Moore
@catclub:
Neil Stephenson had a duel fought with cannons- howitzers, to be precise- in The Baroque Cycle. And I can verify that some cannons did in fact have “Ultima Ratio Regum” stamped on them– and until surprisingly late in history. My local park has a WWI-era German artillery piece, and it has that on the barrel. In this case, it’s on the top of the barrel rather than around the muzzle, but it was still being put on artillery into the 20th century.
Ken
@catclub: Walter Jon Williams’s SF novel Rock of Ages has a scene where someone is challenged to a duel, and chooses the cestus – basically a glove fitted with iron plates, spikes, and hooks, and the combatants keep hitting one another until someone can’t go on.
The opponent withdrew the challenge.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
The initial filing is more rigorous but no one is poring over these returns. That’s why there’s all those “charity navigator” sites where they rate them on percentage of donations that go to projects, because they are legal but not especially ethical. Nonprofit status isn’t a halo or a seal, and people sometimes think it is. I’ve never been involved with one that had employees, and there would be additional filing in Ohio if that were the case.
burnspbesq
@Eolirin:
Willing to bet Trump refuses to provide the DNA test, and what’s the judge going to do?
There are plenty of things that a judge (and the opposing party) can do when faced with discovery abuse by a party. If I were plaintiffs’ lawyer, my next step would be to file a request for admissions. At trial, the court could instruct the jury that it can infer that the DNA sample that wasn’t provided would have shown that it was Trump.
He’s fucked, literally and figuratively.
steppy
Two threads come together on the same day. Didn’t Steve-O tell Richard Wolff, for Wolff’s book, that “[the Russia thing] is all about money laundering”? D.A. Vance is putting together a case against Fat Bastard that assuredly contains some dry cleaning, and Bannon finds himself in the hoosegow sitting on a pile of receipts. That’s enough to put a hop in your step.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
?
Doug R
@germy: That last tweet has been removed by Twitter.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
He got away with it for years, and the United Way is huge. If he had done the hookers and blow thing in his basement instead of Vegas he would have gone on 20 more.
VeniceRiley
Hm. Wonder if their IRS 990 is available yet. because that could make for another serious charge if they lied on it. And that could be done after Jan21.
James E Powell
@Roger Moore:
That was a popular conversation among the group of lawyers I hung around with. She didn’t really have evidence of significant damages. But it was a different world back then and he is a Democrat. It was believed that even admitting he had sex with Paula Jones would be fatal to his presidency. Now, a president can brag that he sexually assaults married women and it doesn’t bother the press/media or half the country.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: If you are trying to tell me that non-profit status does not a good and decent organization make, I already am aware.
Ken
@Kay: Or just paid for the H&B out of his own money instead of billing them to the charity. You’d think a half-million-dollar annual compensation would be enough for that.
germy
@Doug R: Good. He’s giving lethal advice.
patroclus
Just for fun, I’ve been watching War Room Pandemic on NewsMax late at night to see what Bannon et. al. have been up to (lately, they’ve been going all in on the Chinese Communist party being responsible for everything). I’m definitely watching tonight (although I’m guessing Bannon won’t be there because it’s a replay of what they do in the morning).
Geminid
I’m looking forward to seeing Bannon’s mug shot. He usually looks, shall we say, “rumpled.”
James E Powell
@catclub:
Trump is no master. It’s the Republican judges and justice who are determined to protect him. I wish there were more Democrats calling them out for it. It might make them less willing to be so blatantly partisan.
cain
@Kay:
Yes, but now the Qanons are coming onboard and so now you’re going to get true believers of conspiracy theories – so there will be no agreements on anything because there will be no rational actors there at all.
geg6
@dww44:
He’s my rep and you obviously know nothing about my district. This is a district that was deep blue until Obama and the GOP has taken over the place ever since. This is deep, deep Trump country in Appalachian Western PA (at least a large portion of it). We were thrilled to get Lamb in when every other Dem who was left in office, whether municipal or state, lost in 2018. He’s a middle of the road guy who is the only Dem who could ever win here now. And he voted to impeach. So go fuck off with your opinion on a place and people you know nothing about, but somehow think you can tell us how we’re doing it wrong. Jesus.
Kay
@Geminid:
They really must have felt untouchable because they were still soliciting donations 2 days ago. Wow. These are people who thought they were protected.
Ken
@Kay: Well, according to the indictment they had switched to encrypted communications, so there was no way anyone could find out what they were doing.
The Moar You Know
@Omnes Omnibus: And that’s what ended dueling as an institution in the US. Southerners were extremely good with both pistols and swords; they’d deliberately provoke Northern politicians into challenging them and would usually win. That all changed with the Bowie knife, a weapon that they’d never practiced with or against. As soon as Northerners started accepting challenges and picking knives as the weapon to be used, that was the end of the duel in the United States.
Also tells you something about the supposed character of those Southern “gentlemen”. Once that playing field leveled out, they quit.
Martin
@Ken: You know, we have a body that is barely cold we could use.
zhena gogolia
@The Moar You Know:
In Russia the choice of weapons was worked out between the seconds.
Another Scott
ObOpen Thread, ICYMI – https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/20/ramped-up-testing-and-daily-briefings-inside-bidens-plan-to-take-over-the-governments-tumultuous-covid-19-response/
Good, good.
(via Helen Branswell)
Cheers,
Scott.
James E Powell
@geg6:
Since you know the district and the congressperson and the person to whom you were speaking did not, you could have simply explained things without the rage and hateful language. We are, after all, on the same team.
Doug R
@Immanentize:
Boats n’ Hoes
Gin & Tonic
@Ken: Knowing what little I know about those guys, I’d bet their opsec was terrible, and their “encrypted” communications were readable by the investigators.
Cameron
Trump doesn’t know Kris Kobach? Must be a different Kris Kobach than the dude he anointed as high priest for his voter-fraud inquisition.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@geg6: I think it was in 2008 Nancy Pelosi would tell reporters about dissident Dems: I don’t care if they campaign against me, as long as they vote with me
sdhays
@The Moar You Know: It was such an obvious scam that they could have written in the fine print of the donation form that the only walls that would be built with the money would be in the mansions of the organizers and members of the board and they wouldn’t have been short a dime.
Eunicecycle
@Geminid: and that’s when he KNOWS he’s going on TV or will be photographed! Mug shots are usually the worst picture anyone ever has, so Bannon’s should be frightening.
Cameron
@Gin & Tonic: “The tipoff was when we saw somebody changing numbers with a Sharpie….”
The Moar You Know
@zhena gogolia: Negotiated or did one side have the option? That is interesting. Here in the states, the main role of the seconds was to negotiate out a settlement that would “preserve everyone’s honor”, avoiding the duel. Their secondary role, if negotiations failed, was “get rid of the fucking evidence quickly” because dueling was a fairly serious crime for decades, yet one that still occurred quite often, before the field leveled out and it was abandoned by chickenshit Confederates.
catclub
What I remember are reports of long bouts of ‘delay and refuse’ during discovery by Trump. Only when the serious order for cooperation came, does anything (insufficient – natch) get produced. Then start over on the next discovery request.
Martin
@Ken: Funny thing about greed – it doesn’t have limits.
catclub
There are publicly available 990 form lookup websites.
(They had a better copy of my old organizations 990’s than we did.)
sdhays
@Gin & Tonic: Bannon really likes to talk, especially when he thinks he’s demonstrating his own brilliance and savvy. A skilled interviewer can probably get everything out of him just by showing up and chatting.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Raven: At some point the rubes must come to the realization that the entire Trump organization is nothing more than an elaborate scheme to separate their social security checks from them.
PaulWartenberg
Twitter was full of conspiracy-nut counter-challenges of “OH WHAT ABOUT THE CLINTON FOUNDATION THEY ARE EVEN BIGGER CROOKS!!!1!!11” but it’s telling in the four years since 2016 that both Clinton and trump’s non-profits were under scrutiny that the Clinton non-profit is STILL operating and the trump’s had to shut down before any of the kiddies got arrested right then and there (it’s STILL under investigation I believe, the one that’s winning the fight to get the tax returns released).
I had access to the grant information at my library, and I looked at both Foundations back in 2016. Clinton’s had documented everything down to the semicolon, listed contact info and names of every officer, linked every 990 report, listed hundreds of donated causes and beneficiaries. trump’s barely had anything, just the names of officers (mostly family members and one lawyer, it wasn’t Cohen though it was the other guy who got into legal trouble), no contact info, no schedules for receiving grant requests, near-empty 990s with very few gifts listed and no idea who received those gifts.
It is no surprise that Bannon and other grifters abuse the tax-exempt status of non-profits, figuring out ways to avoid the existing regulations to line their own pockets while they do nothing else with what the funds are SUPPOSED to do. It has to do with the mindset. Liberals tend to think “Oh we need to help the poor” and so set up non-profits to try and aid them as best as possible, while Conservatives act as though “I got mine, lemme use this non-profit’s exempt status to pay back to myself, suckas.”
Ken
That doesn’t narrow it down much.
catclub
@James E Powell:
From Slate article on it: delay delay delay.
catclub
I think that point is defined as the twelfth of never.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@The Moar You Know: I’m not sure how this differs from his normal state. He looks like a hobo most of the time; I imagine he’s pretty rank as well.
satby
@Kay: I’m on the board of our rescue non-profit in Michigan. We’re required to submit the 990, a separate annual report, and submit filings yearly to renew our charitable solicitation license. Plus we have audits due to the state for state grants for the TNR work we do. And they’re all due at different times of the year. So depending on where you are, non-profits are better regulated.
geg6
@James E Powell:
Since this person didn’t know about me or the place or even Conor Lamb, perhaps he could have actually done some research before spouting off like he knew everything he needed to know from one interview and from living in some red area somewhere that is now, apparently, purple. Perhaps you could also refrain from being the civility police around here. I have no patience for people criticizing shit they know nothing about and definitely none for people trying to be my mother.
Roger Moore
@Litlebritdifrnt:
If they were smart enough to figure that out, they wouldn’t be rubes.
Subsole
@Amir Khalid:
I knew a couple people of Japanese ancestry who were rather admiring of Hitler.
I wonder, is Imperial Japan idolized like this in the lands they occupied? Like, are there Indonesians or Vietnamese running around with “Pearl harbor FTW” shirts and shit?
I mean, I’ve seen Polish people wearing swastikas, which is just… 0_0
Subsole
@Immanentize:
Fuck that. I want maximum intrusion on this fucker.
Roto-rooter. Don’t stop ’til you hit the back of his teeth.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ken: My bets are these two at the same time.
Clueless and cheep is the Trumparian way.
Yutsano
All I know is I would kill to have Barbara Walters interview him again.
Roger Moore
@PaulWartenberg:
I remember people saying the Clinton Foundation was a model of transparency. Part of the reason political hacks were able to write their lies about the Clinton Foundation so effectively was because they had access to all the financial information.
It’s part of a bigger problem with our political reporting system in general: it treats transparency as a weakness. Reporters whine about politicians who don’t provide them with information, but those complaints are always perfunctory. In contrast, reporters will go through information the politicians voluntarily divulge with a fine-toothed comb and will happily blow anything they find out of proportion. Look at how little came out of Trump’s refusal to share his taxes compared to the amount that’s come out from politicians who do share their taxes. The net result is to push politicians away from transparency. It never pays to share. Until our political reporting makes lack of transparency a bigger issue than the minor things they find in people who share, people will refuse to share.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kay:
Two words: Shaun King.
Calouste
The yacht that Brannon was arrested on is owned by a Chinese businessman called Guo Wengui, a member of Mar-a-Lago, and someone with a beef against the CCP, to put it mildly. Dollars to donuts that he has served as the shitgibbon’s “special advisor on China”.
There go two miscreants
I keep hoping for one of these in reality among the Dump cabal.
lgerard
Holy Jesus!
This article from the Herald-Tribune has some amazing details about Bannon’s co-conspirator, the aptly named, Andrew Badaloto.
Bill Arnold
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Gravenstone
@Cheryl Rofer: Here’s hoping he doesn’t wind up in the Jeffrey Epstein Suite.
burnspbesq
@catclub:
Maybe not. Trump has to show a likelihood of success on appeal in order to get a stay. The District Judge killed a lot of trees explaining why Trump didn’t have a leg to stand on.
danielx
@Calouste:
The jokes, they write themselves….
Eta: Bet the shitgibbon is being medicated this afternoon. Bigly.
“Barr, what the fuck are you doing? I hired you to take care of this shit!”
mrmoshpotato
@TerryC:
Hahahahahahahaha
EthylEster
@dww44: There’s a difference between being a strong Democrat who does not equivocate and one who backs away from supporting his party’s impeachment of Trump in an attempt to assuage his constituents who support him.
So you reject the possibility that he is accurately communicating what some of his constituents have told him?
There are a lot of mind-readers in this thread.
patrick II
Bannon was the philosopher-king of the Trump administration, at least as far as anyone thought more than the immediate means of gaining power. Bannon believes that multiculturalism doesn’t work, that a single culture — in the United States one based on European (read white) Christianity — is called for. Strangely, considering who he works for, he views capitalism as a failure that harms the average person. He wouldn’t call himself a Fascist, but he shares the belief in nationalism, an appeal to traditionalism, and a rejection of much of the Enlightenment.
And, in addition to being Trump’s philospher-king, he believes in taking money from suckers.
Ken
@danielx: In the movie version, after dragging Bannon off, the Postal Service inspectors plant limpet mines on the yacht and send it to the bottom of the ocean.
By the way, during these arrests are the authorities following Trump’s instructions from three years ago (or thereabouts)? I think “banging their heads on the roof while shoving them in the car” was a recommended technique?
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
That’s not a lurid fantasy. That is a massively disgusting one.
dopey-o
My somewhat ethically challenged future ex-father-in-law once suggested we start up a”not for profit but with real outrageous salaries” oganization. I unwisely declined. 20 years later, he and my cousin’s ex were still at it. Not super rich, but not greedy and still walking around free.
I had been talking to them about online fundraising via this new internet thingy from DARPA.
They called me a genius and paid for my beer.
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Well yes, in this case.
One thing about actual people billionaires buying stuff, they expect what they paid for. And often get testy when they don’t get it.
WhatsMyNym
@geg6: The other person may never see or read your reply. Others are reading your response, they are your audience.
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
When I worked in professional sports, I would on occasion have to go in the restroom with a participant, and watch to insure a legitimate sample. Not the highlight of my day.
ellie
@mrmoshpotato: That would be adorable!
Gravenstone
@JPL: There will be pictures. There have always been pictures…
James E Powell
@burnspbesq:
Your faith in Republican judges and justices exceeds mine.
trnc
1:24 seems kinda interesting.
WaterGirl
@satby: In Illinois, once you hit a certain threshold of money coming in, you have to have an audit every year.
Miss Bianca
@Ken: Damn, I may have to check those out!
The Moar You Know
@Subsole: OMFG no. I’ve had the chance to speak with both Koreans (in Korea) and Chinese (in China) and the utter rage they still bear against their occupiers is amazing. Well, not so amazing once you found out what they did. Japan is fucking lucky that the Chinese didn’t use their first (and subsequent) nukes against them.
The Germans almost always would co-opt the majority group in the countries they invaded, so a lot of people benefited by their presence. The Japanese sent the men to the slave mines, the women to the brothels, and used the kids for target practice. Nobody was exempt.
The thing that started off my asking was my (I thought) innocent question as to why I hadn’t seen a single Japanese car in China. They explained why. Hoo boy. I’ll never forget the rage in that mans voice. Nine months later, noticed the same thing in Korea and had a pretty good idea of why. Asked anyway, this time being somewhat prepared for the answer. Still. I think if you voiced admiration for the Japanese in either society you’d be murdered by your neighbors. And no court would convict.
trollhattan
@patrick II:
Bannon has never dropped character. Few months ago I heard him interviewed (BBC?) while on one of his overseas “Nazis are GREAT” tours and they trolled him with “Now that you’re out of the administration, how about that Donald Trump?” and Bannon was staunch with “He’s a hardworking genius, one of the smartest people I know.”* Clearly there remain business entanglements.
*Essentially the very thing Peter Navarro says on every opportunity.
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
WWII seems to continue preventing S. Korea and Japan from uniting against China’s existential threat to both, 80 years hence.
They need to stop with that shit, but IDK what it’s going to take.
Kenneth Krasity
Curt Schilling reportedly arrested
https://www.amny.com/sports/curt-schilling-reportedly-arrested-for-involvement-in-steve-bannon-fraudulent-border-wall-campaign/
Miss Bianca
@mrmoshpotato: how do you get those little musical notes to appear in your posts? Love them!
@SiubhanDuinne: Damn it, now you’ve made me want to re-read Clouds of Witness, which I haven’t done in years!
Yutsano
Reason number ∞ -1 that I want Stephen Miller to have thousands of cuts from a vegetable peeler then dropped in vinegar.
Jay Noble
@VeniceRiley: Noon, Jan. 20th, 2021.
Not particularly directed at you, but why do people keep ptting the wrong date?
Noon, Jan. 20th, 2021.
gwangung
@trollhattan: The US was the buffer for that.
Not any longer.
trollhattan
@gwangung: 
Sigh, sadly I think that’s correct. I have a list “Things Joe needs to do on Day 1” but the printer is out of paper.
Ken
@Kenneth Krasity: Interesting. There must have been more indictments that covered some (all?) of the board of directors.
I’m sure there are people howling about the deep state, but what if this is actually the old-school Republicans moving against the grifters?
Ken
@Jay Noble: I think they’re allowing Biden sixteen hours for the traditional inaugural festivities, though it seems unlikely those can happen.
Captain C
@Kenneth Krasity: So much for his chances of finally getting into the Hall of Fame next year.
Sebastian
@trnc:
Don Jr promoted it recently. Buckle up.
TICK TOCK MOTHERFUCKERS!!
Jay Noble
@Ken: Jan. 20th is a Wednesday. I suggest that Biden and Company come out on the Nov. 4 and announce that all Inaugral Festivies wil be postponed until Sat. Jan. 23 so that the new Administration can get to work at like 12:05 pm. 3 days of signing so intense that Joe will have to wear a sling to the Balls on Saturady.
Aleta
As a wild guess, strictly a guess, I’m guessing that Fisher Industries , who’s built wall sections for BtWall, might also be involved with the Bannon-type or Kushner-type schemes for campaign funding and grift.
(They built the BtWall section in Sunland Park, NM on private land that Bannon and Kobach are said to have forced or “railroaded” through without starting with proper permits. They also got $1.5 million from BtW to build the 3 mile section in Mission TX (part of a $42 million project) that’s already in bad shape because it’s too close to the Rio Grande. The U.S. is now suing Fisher on behalf of the International Boundary and Water Commission for treaty violations.)
January 31st, 2018, High Plains Reader. Some of their history before they got involved with the wall:
Only lately have their efforts to get wall-building contracts from the Army Corps of E. begun to pay off. A 400$ million contract in Dec. 2019 to build in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Yuma County, Ariz. (but now that is under review). In mid-July they were awarded a $1.3 billion border wall contract from the feds. They seem to be generous campaign donors.
I’ve been reading about their twists and turns — might post links if the subject comes up again.
BobinPDX
Wow, over 400 comments, but no mention that Timothy Shea is the attorney that Bill Barr picked to sign off on the Mike Flynn non-prosecution memo.
This reaches into the current DOJ.
Miss Bianca
@The Moar You Know: Hell, my father who fought in the Pacific – he was on Iwo Jima – had a fit when he found out I wanted to do a Japanese classical theater seminar in Kyoto one summer. Not only refused to give me any money towards the project, he practically threatened to disown me if I went!
So it’s not just the Chinese and the Koreans, shall we say.
Patricia Kayden
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Ken: Sounds like the ending to “Day of the Dolphin”
evodevo
@Kay: Yes. I’ve had to inform a LOT of people about this recently…they seem to think these guys are the same as IGs or something, whereas they are merely postal police, and have NO say in policy matters. If there is fraud, embezzlement, crimes committed using the mail, or workplace violence or threats, THAT is their remit…
David Anderson
@BobinPDX: different Tim Shea.
BobinPDX
@David Anderson: Ah, thought I saw that it was the same guy. Too bad.
evodevo
@Gin & Tonic: If mail fraud was involved, and out of state donors contributed, then it’s federal…
evodevo
@Eunicecycle: You have NO idea how true that episode was lolol – post office scuttlebutt has a few of these stories to tell…
evodevo
@The Moar You Know: All public officials in Ky have to swear an oath that includs the phrase “I do further solemnly swear (or affirm) that since the adoption of the present Constitution, I, being a citizen of this State, have not fought a duel with deadly weapons within this State nor out of it, nor have I sent or accepted a challenge to fight a duel with deadly weapons, nor have I acted as second in carrying a challenge, nor aided or assisted any person thus offending, so help me God. “
The Lodger
@Jay Noble: PHRASING!