Adjusting the Facts to Match Their Ideology

The Trump administration is dismantling a network of ocean sensors that monitor conditions related to anthropogenic climate change, because if they plug their ears and close their eyes, there is no problem.

Attempting to suppress information about an ongoing planet-wide catastrophe will not end well.

The Trump administration is targeting one of the world’s most trusted sources of climate and oceanic data—the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). According to the New York Times, ships will be dispatched this month to remove the more than 900 deep-sea instruments that comprise the network, which, for the past decade, has collected crucial data on physical, chemical, geological and biological conditions from all layers of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans on a continuous basis.

In a statement dated May 21, the OOI confirmed that the National Science Foundation (NSF) had begun a “descoping” process, including removing all in-water infrastructure from four of the OOI’s five deployed arrays. “This plan includes the removal of all in-water infrastructure from the Irminger Sea, Station Papa, Endurance and Pioneer Arrays, subject to ship scheduling and other operational constraints,” the OOI said in the statement. This covers instruments stationed in the Pacific, as well as others in the waters off the U.S. Atlantic coast and Greenland and Iceland. The initiative was originally meant to run for 25 years.

In a statement, an NSF spokesperson said the intention was not to cancel the OOI but to transition to a “nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies, as well as smart lifecycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio.”

The NSF statement is best described as an attempt to get a, "Bullsh%$ bingo," win.

The suppression of this data, which is literally right out of the Project 2025 playbook, will cripple climate science for decades.

So, It Was Jared Kushner, Huh?

We now know who the, "Senior Trump Administration Official," who was mentioned in an intelligence intercept between two foreign officials.

You know, the one subject to a whistleblower complaint after DNI Tulsi Gabbard sat on this information rather than passing it up the chain as required by law. 

According to the WSJ, it was Jared Kushner, whose primary role in the Trump administration is arranging foreign bribes for Donald Trump.

Not a surprise.

The highly classified whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is related to a conversation intercepted last spring in which two foreign nationals discussed Jared Kushner, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

It couldn’t be determined which country the foreign nationals are from or what they discussed about Kushner. But the connection to Kushner sheds further light on the top-secret whistleblower complaint that bureaucratically stalled within Gabbard’s agency for eight months and was kept locked in a safe until it reached Congress in heavily redacted form last week.

………

The Wall Street Journal and others reported last week that the complaint was based on a foreign-intelligence conversation collected by the National Security Agency. The conversation included a discussion about a person close to Trump and at least in part concerned issues related to Iran, the Journal reported. 

………

A heavily redacted version of the complaint was seen by select lawmakers in Congress last week after the Journal first reported on its existence and that it had stalled within Gabbard’s office. Democrats have questioned why the complaint was held up for eight months and indicated it raises national-security concerns that deserve more investigation. Republicans have defended Gabbard and said the attention on the complaint has been orchestrated to undermine the Trump administration.

This is a significant story only because Gabbard suppressed this. 

Had it been sent to the White House, it would never have been an issue.

It's always the politics that get you. 

It's Monday, Jeffrey Epstein Day

Which is kind of like the worst, "Prince Spaghetti Day," ever.

In the past week, I have saved 19(!) articles for potential discussions.  Some are duplicative, so I will not be using them all. 

The lede here, as it is the most surprising, and perhaps important revelation, was that Trump's nominee to head the Federal Reserve was repeatedly on the list.

The new Jeffrey Epstein files released on Friday include "nauseating" details about President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Federal Reserve, according to one GOP analyst.

Rick Wilson, co-founder of The Lincoln Project, wrote in a new Substack essay on Sunday that the January 30 Epstein files dump included details about Kevin Warsh, who Trump recently announced as his pick to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in May. Wilson argued that Warsh's name appeared in the files "like a bad penny."

"It is a bit of timing so on-the-nose it would be rejected by a mediocre political thriller," Wilson wrote. "Warsh, a man whose resume reads like a checklist for the Davos-and-Hamptons set, isn’t just a “Wall Street veteran” or an Estée Lauder heir by marriage; he is now a recurring character in the Epstein ledger."

I'm pretty sure that someone in the White House is looking for another Trump toady to nominate, just in case.

 

Ghislaine Maxwell has filed papers saying that there are at least 29 other co-conspirators that the Department of Justice let walk away.

Ghislaine Maxwell may be locked up in the Club Med version of a Texas prison, but she just lobbed a rhetorical grenade straight into the middle of Washington’s most awkward silence.

Buried in a habeas petition that Maxwell recently filed in court, hoping to void her conviction, the convicted associate of Jeffrey Epstein references four potential “co-conspirators” and “25 men” who allegedly reached “secret settlements” connected to Epstein’s abuse—and were never indicted.

Which immediately raises the question Pam Bondi and her Department of Justice desperately want to avoid answering: Who are these men, and why are they still being protected?

(emphasis original)

The answer here is easy: No one was pursued beyond Epstein ecause, to quote the composer (not the political scientist) Frank Wilhoit, "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

If there is anything in the Trump administration that even remotely approaches a deeply held belief, it is that rich white guys should suffer no consequences, ever.

Did you know that Elon Musk is so pathetic that he  begged for an invite to Epstein Island?

This was years after Epstein was convicted of sex crimes. 

What a miserable excuse for a human being.

Somehow, Elon Musk’s infamous outburst accusing Donald Trump of being in the Epstein files has managed to age both incredibly well and incredibly poorly.

Trump, as you’re probably well aware by now, has featured quite a bit in the DOJ’s ongoing releases of documents from its investigation into the deceased sex criminal and billionaire financier.

But now so does Musk, after the government released a new batch of millions of more files on Friday. They show that Musk had more than a few email exchanges with Epstein, including one correspondence where he asks to visit the convicted sex trafficker’s notorious island, where he allegedly brought dozens of underage girls to be abused.

“Will be in the BVI/St Bart’s area over the holidays,” Musk wrote in an email sent to Epstein in December 2013, referring to the region near Epstein’s Caribbean island. “Is there a good time to visit?”

“Anytime I will be there 28-7th,” Epstein responded the same day, with his characteristically thick layer of typographic errors.

“I will send heli for you,” he later added.

“Thanks,” Musk said.

The exchanges — which took place years after Epstein was first convicted of sex crimes against underage girls in 2008 — clearly contradict Musk’s claims about his relationship with Epstein in the past, which he has spent years downplaying. In 2019, he told Vanity Fair that he visited Epstein’s Manhattan house only on a single occasion, and just for half an hour. And the way he tells it, that was that. “He tried repeatedly to get me to visit his island. I declined,” Musk insisted.

Musk has firmly held that line ever since. For that matter, so has his chatbot Grok. But according to the newly released emails, Musk wasn’t declining Epstein’s invitations: he was inviting himself over.

………

Even more damningly in December 2012, Musk sent an email practically begging Epstein for an invitation to some debauchery.

“Do you have any parties planned? I’ve been working to the edge of sanity this year and so, once my kids head home after Christmas, I really want to hit the party scene in St Barts or elsewhere and let loose,” Musk wrote. He added that “a peaceful island experience is the opposite of what I’m looking for.”

………

Those were far from the only times the pair made plans. In April 2013, Epstein asked Musk if he’d be around to have “dinner with woody allen and crowd at my house,” referring to the influential filmmaker and actor who’s also been accused of child sex abuse. Musk replied that he “might be in town.”

Epstein also invited Musk to his island in September 2012, recommending he “bring your friend or friends.”

“Sounds good,” Musk wrote, “I will try to make it.”

And at least one email suggests the two had actually gotten together at one point. In September 2014, Epstein asked Elon, “are=you planning to do st barth again for xmas?” (St. Barth is Saint Barthélemy, where Musk has reportedly vacationed in the past.) 

I would be remiss if I did not quote the head in a Gizmodo article, "Don’t You Dare ‘Misinterpret’ Elon Musk’s Epstein Emails. Just the Facts Are Bad Enough."

In addition to the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™, we have numerous reports of rich and powerful people who continued to party with Epstein after his conviction, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (former Prince Andrew), Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, NY Giants Owner Steve Tisch, Sergey Brin, white shoe Wall Street Lawyer Brad Karp, private equity mogul Leon Black, recently hired CBS contributor and health influencer Peter Attia, 2028 LA Olympic Chairman Casey Wasserman, NY real estate magnate (and major Andrew Cumo donor) Andrew Farkas 

And of course, literal vampire Peter Thiel plotted with Epstein for various purposes, including his ultimately attempt to extract his revenge on Gawker.

Meanwhile, why the Department of Justice did their best to protect Donald Trump and the rest of the rich white guys, they somehow managed to include the names, and in some cases nude pictures, of Epstein's victims.

The Justice Department published dozens of unredacted nude images on its website, showing young women or possibly teenagers whose photos were contained in files related to the wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

As part of its required disclosure of the Epstein files, the federal government was tasked with redacting both sexually explicit imagery and information that could be used to identify victims.

But in the process of reviewing more than three million pages uploaded to the Justice Department’s website on Friday, The New York Times came across nearly 40 unredacted images that appeared to be part of a personal photo collection, showing both nude bodies and the faces of the people portrayed. 

………

Other victims have expressed outrage that their names and other identifying information have been found in the files. Brittany Henderson, a lawyer for one woman who was identified in the files even though she had not previously been linked publicly to Mr. Epstein, called the redaction failures “abhorrent.” 

……… 

The redactions at times appear haphazard and contradictory, with some files shielding someone’s name and a duplicate file elsewhere making the name public. One email described an “Epstein victim list” but then left dozens of subsequent names exposed, except for one that was redacted. 

I do not believe that this was an accident.  I believe that this was an attempt by the Trump Administration to frighten and silence Epstein's victims. 

I wish that I had the guillotine concession for the lot of them.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

Twitter Publish

So allegedly one of the reasons that people are able to see past the redactions on the Epstein list is because Doge cancelled the Government’s contract with Adobe reader! Now this is totally ironic! 👇👇 pic.twitter.com/RuGhPElPfr

— Suzie rizzio (@Suzierizzo1) December 27, 2025

Yes, this story has been confirmed.

I am amused. 

So the Trump Administration has Released the Epstein Files

 With a few redactions:

To quote Marvin the Martian, "I'm not mad just very disappointed."

Donald Trump’s justice department was hit with legal threats and scathing outrage after authorities released a limited, heavily redacted trove of Jeffrey Epstein files in an apparent violation of the law mandating the near-complete disclosure of these documents by Friday.

“The justice department’s document dump this afternoon does not comply with Thomas Massie and my Epstein Transparency Act,” Ro Khanna, the California Democratic congressman who co-authored the law requiring full disclosure of all Epstein files by 19 December, said in a video statement.

“It is an incomplete release, with too many redactions. Thomas Massie and I are exploring all options,” he also said, among them possible impeachment of justice department officials, finding them in contempt of Congress.

………

Frustrations mounted on Saturday as the justice department released some new files, including transcripts, while also removing more than a dozen others from its website related to Epstein, with no explanation.

At least 16 files disappeared from the department’s public webpage, according to an Associated Press tally. The documents included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showing a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, is a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

………

New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the bipartisan chorus of lawmakers slamming Trump’s justice department, including the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, and the FBI director, Kash Patel, for the documents’ lackluster rollout.

“Now the coverup is out in the open. This is far from over. Everyone involved will have to answer for this,” Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, said on X on Friday. “Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, whole admin. Protecting a bunch of rapists and pedophiles because they have money, power, and connections. Bondi should resign tonight.” 

We knew that there would never be anything beyond malicious compliance from these folks.

Think of the Overtime Costs

It turns out that the FBI was so busy covering up Donald Trump's role in the Epstein files that they had to stop fighting crime.

Newly released internal emails show the FBI mounting a costly overtime-fueled sprint to analyze the Epstein files as political pressure grew to release them—in a project dubbed the “Special Redaction Project,” Bloomberg reports.

………

A conspiracy theory still thrives among some in Trump’s base that Epstein knew the names of other rich or powerful pedophiles.

Epstein knew, because he was the US oligarchs pimp.  There's a pretty good chance that Trump was not just a client, but a partner, as he owned the organization that ran the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA pageants from 1996 until 2015.

Correspondence obtained and detailed by Bloomberg’s FOIA Files lays out how FBI Director Kash Patel sent about 1,000 special agents to the bureau’s Central Records Complex in Winchester, Virginia, for crash-course redaction training on the “Epstein Transparency Project,” also called the “Special Redaction Project.”

That's 1,000 special agents for an agency that has, according to its website, about 38,000 total employees with about ⅓ of those being special agents, so we are talking about 8% of the field agents being pulled in to cover Donald Trump's pale flabby ass.

Good to know that this is where out tax dollars are going. 

Gee, What Do They Have to Hide?

It appears that the Department of Homeland Security has been routinely deleting text messages since April, in violation of the Federal Records Act.

I'm sure that Chuck Schumer will write a strongly worded letter to Donald Trump.

The Department of Homeland Security rebuffed a request for public records related to the National Guard deployment in Los Angeles this summer, saying that the agency had not maintained text message data among top officials since early April, according to its communications with a nonprofit watchdog group.

A July 23 letter from the Homeland Security Department’s public records office, in denying the request from the nonprofit American Oversight, said that “text message data generated after April 9” was “no longer maintained.” The group had requested all messages received and sent by top department officials related to the deployment of the National Guard in the Southern California city, which President Trump authorized in response to protests over immigration raids.

The agency gave a similar response on Thursday to a request for communications about the migrant detention camp in the Everglades called “Alligator Alcatraz,” telling American Oversight that it was “unable to locate or identify any response records” since the agency “no longer has the capability to conduct a search of text messages.”

Under the Federal Records Act, government agencies are required to preserve all documentation that officials and federal workers produce while executing their duties, and they have to make federal records available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act unless they fall under certain exemptions. 

I am sure that Schumer's letter will be particularly strong.

It would be nice if the opposition was not a bunch of delusional octogenarian cowards. 

Monday is Jeffrey Epstein Day

First, are a couple of commentaries on L'Affaire Epstein, the first from Amanda Marcotte, who explains in a rather succinct way why this is so important to MAGAts.

Quoting the sub-hed, "His base needs a story where they're the heroes, not the villains ."

This is the core of their fixation.  In order to feel like heroes, rather than zeros, MAGATs need to believe that the other side is f%$#ing children and are about to be arrested for it. 

Trump can be caught on tape joking about abusing women, or be found liable for sexual assault, but his followers believe that their support for him makes them protectors of innocent children, and instead they are chumps.

………

But you can’t be a warrior for rape culture day in and day out without starting to ask yourself, “Am I the baddie?” That’s where Epstein and his imaginary client list come in. By hating on Epstein and fantasizing about political enemies being on the “list,” MAGA gets to play at being the heroes for once. Better yet, they can do so without the risk of bringing actual predators to justice, a precedent they don’t want to establish lest it come for their leaders. After all, Epstein is dead, and his “list” only existed in their fevered imaginations.

Or least, that felt true until Trump started visibly panicking about the Epstein files. But giving up on the Epstein case now that Trump is drenched in flop sweat would amount to MAGA admitting they never cared about pedophiles or justice for victims — that it was always just a fairy tale they told to conceal the ugly truth about themselves, even to themselves. 

I recommend reading the whole article.

On the more humorous side, the invaluable Charlie Pierce observes that,  "If you want Epstein out of the news, maybe don’t fire the person who prosecuted him," which is a good indicator just how much Trump and his Evil Minions™ are melting down over all of this.

In more "newsey" news, following her talk with Trump's former defense attorney, now Deputy Attorney General Deputy Todd Blanche, she was moved to a "Club Fed" prison in Texas, where no doubt she will be playing tennis with Elizabeth Holmes.

People convicted of sex-trafficking minors are not supposed to be in that sort of facility.

BTW, remember when Wired found irregularities in the surveillance tapes at the jail where Epstein was held when he commited suicide?  Well, CBS News has found yet more irregularities in the video.

BTW, before declaring that there were, "No Epstein files," the FBI was planning to release the documents under the Freedom of Information Act, and it appears that Kash Patel directed the Bureau's FOIA team to redact all references to Trump.

That's all I have right now, sh%$-for-brains was consolidating the Epstein post, and deleted everything.

 

Donning My Tinfoil Hat

The reporting that metadata from the Jeffrey Epstein suicide video shows evidence of editing is ……… interesting.

Nothing to see here, move along:

The United States Department of Justice this week released nearly 11 hours of what it described as “full raw” surveillance footage from a camera positioned near Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night before he was found dead. The release was intended to address conspiracy theories about Epstein’s apparent suicide in federal custody. But instead of putting those suspicions to rest, it may fuel them further.

Metadata embedded in the video and analyzed by WIRED and independent video forensics experts shows that rather than being a direct export from the prison’s surveillance system, the footage was modified, likely using the professional editing tool Adobe Premiere Pro. The file appears to have been assembled from at least two source clips, saved multiple times, exported, and then uploaded to the DOJ’s website, where it was presented as “raw” footage.

Experts caution that it’s unclear what exactly was changed, and that the metadata does not prove deceptive manipulation. The video may have simply been processed for public release using available software, with no modifications beyond stitching together two clips. But the absence of a clear explanation for the processing of the file using professional editing software complicates the Justice Department’s narrative. In a case already clouded by suspicion, the ambiguity surrounding how the file was processed is likely to provide fresh fodder for conspiracy theories.

Thankfully, we can depend on the probity and competence of the Trump administration to get to the bottom of this. (not)

Truth be told, I am more meta on this than anything else.

What interests me is not the irregularities of the case, but rather how it appears that these irregularities appear to be doing real damage to both Donald Trump and the Trump administration, evan amongst some of the most vociferous MAGAts..

Gee, You Mean That They Lied?

During the campaign, Trump promised to release the files related to the case of Trump buddy Jeffrey Epstein.

Today, US Attorney General Pam Bondi released the files of the jet setting pedophile to a carefully curated selection of conservative influences, and most interesting among the revelations are:

• You thought that they would reveal information about a notorious long time Trump associate?  Psyche.
• Nope, nothing here.
• Yeah, suck on this MAGAt losers. 

So, yes, this is not a release of anything:

For days, Attorney General Pam Bondi had talked about releasing the “Epstein files,” supposedly secret documents the federal government has on some of the powerful men who were in the orbit of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

But the roughly 200 pages of documents that Ms. Bondi released on Thursday contained little new information pointing to wrongdoing by anyone other than Mr. Epstein, a registered sex offender who died in jail. The document dump largely consisted of flight logs for Mr. Epstein’s planes — long ago made public — and contact information for hundreds of associates, along with brief descriptions of items found at his residences.

………

On Thursday afternoon, Ms. Bondi and Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I., offered a sneak preview of the documents to several conservative influencers, some of whom emerged from the West Wing waving chunky white binders with the label “The Epstein Files: Phase I.” One of them later called it an “interesting souvenir.”

This is an amazing level from a conservative influences. 

But by midafternoon, the Justice Department had not posted the contents. And Ms. Bondi was drawing criticism on social media from those who had taken her at her word the night before. The conservative personality Glenn Beck posted on X: “The Epstein files are a total joke,” and asked, “Who is subverting POTUS?”

F%$# me.  I agree (in part) with Glenn f%$#ing Beck.

………

Still, some Republicans in Congress took to X to voice displeasure with the information released by Ms. Bondi.

“THIS IS NOT WHAT WE OR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ASKED FOR and a complete disappointment. GET US THE INFORMATION WE ASKED FOR!” wrote Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida.

F%$# me.  I agree (in part) with Representative Anna f%$#ing Paulina Luna of Florida

………

Mr. Epstein is believed to have sexually abused more than 200 teenage girls and young women over three decades. During that time, he amassed a fortune worth $600 million and befriended some of the most powerful and famous people in the world.

Included in the documents, which were finally posted on Thursday night, was an entirely redacted list of 254 people described as masseuses.

(emphasis mine)

Yeah, nothing corrupt here.

Yeah, "Forgot."

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson would really like to help, but he cannot turn over his Whatsapp messages to the inquiry on the government response to Covid because he has forgotten the password.

Yeah, right.

Does the the inquiry have the ability to have Johnson clapped in chains?  They might need it:

Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages are yet to be received by the Covid inquiry because he is said to have forgotten the passcode for his old phone.

The former prime minister’s spokesperson said Johnson still wants to cooperate with the inquiry and did not deny being unable to recall the code.

Johnson stopped using the device in May 2021, after receiving security advice once it had emerged his phone number had been accessible online for at least 15 years.

Bereaved families and technical experts have rubbished Johnson’s excuse for not being able to send the messages to the inquiry, with experts noting the former prime minister would still be able to access his messages as long as his WhatsApp is backed up.

Johnson used the Apple iPhone in question during the coronavirus pandemic, which is likely to contain messages relating to the announcement of lockdowns in 2020.

The government handed over the rest of Johnson’s unredacted notebooks, WhatsApp messages and diaries from his time in Downing Street to the inquiry after efforts to prevent their release failed.

My guess is that there are things on his phone that makes BoJo look even more like a moronic prat than was previously realized.

I did not think that this was possible.

What Do They Have to Hide?

I cannot imagine what sort of wrongdoing that the Uvalde police and the school district police committed while twiddling their thumbs during the mass shooting, but the fact that they have hired a private law firm to assist in their cover-up:

The City of Uvalde and its police department are working with a private law firm to prevent the release of nearly any record related to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in which 19 children and two teachers died, according to a letter obtained by Motherboard in response to a series of public information requests we made. The public records Uvalde is trying to suppress include body camera footage, photos, 911 calls, emails, text messages, criminal records, and more.

“The City has not voluntarily released any information to a member of the public,” the city’s lawyer, Cynthia Trevino, who works for the private law firm Denton Navarro Rocha Bernal & Zech, wrote in a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The city wrote the letter asking Paxton for a determination about what information it is required to release to the public, which is standard practice in Texas. Paxton's office will eventually rule which of the city's arguments have merit and will determine which, if any, public records it is required to release.

The letter makes clear, however, that the city and its police department want to be exempted from releasing a wide variety of records in part because it is being sued, in part because some of the records could include “highly embarrassing information,” in part because some of the information is “not of legitimate concern to the public,” in part because the information could reveal “methods, techniques, and strategies for preventing and predicting crime,” in part because some of the information may cause or may "regard … emotional/mental distress," and in part because its response to the shooting is being investigated by the Texas Rangers, the FBI, and the Uvalde County District Attorney.

Yeah, I imagine that would be spree killers are quaking in their boots at the prospect of facing the Uvalde PD.

They must have done something truly awful for this blatantly transparent coverup. 

Whatever it is, it is beyond my ability to speculate, which is a complete mind-f%$#.

Nothing to See Here, Move Along

In addition to it being a felony,* the fact that Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has been accused of burning some official documents in his office, which constitutes an admission of guilt, or at least guilty intent, which is the requirement for a conspiracy charge.

I don't expect any charges though there should be:

Then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows burned papers in his office after meeting with a House Republican who was working to challenge the 2020 election, according to testimony the Jan. 6 select committee has heard from one of his former aides.

Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked under Meadows when he was former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, told the panel investigating the Capitol attack that she saw Meadows incinerate documents after a meeting in his office with Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.). A person familiar with the testimony described it on condition of anonymity.

The Meadows-Perry meeting came in the weeks after Election Day 2020, as Trump and his allies searched for ways to reverse the election results.

It’s unclear whether Hutchinson told the committee which specific papers were burnt, and if federal records laws required the materials’ preservation. Meadows’ destruction of papers is a key focus for the select committee, and the person familiar with the testimony said investigators pressed Hutchinson for details about the issue for more than 90 minutes during a recent deposition.

………

Before the 2020 election, Perry — who represents the Harrisburg, Pa. region — had a relatively low national profile. But testimony and documents obtained by congressional investigators show he was the first person to connect Trump with Jeffrey Clark, a top Justice Department official who sympathized with the then-president’s efforts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden.

Senior Trump DOJ officials have testified that the former president came close to appointing Clark as acting attorney general in order to use the department’s extraordinary powers to sow doubt about the election results and urge state legislatures to consider overriding Biden’s victory.

Perry, now chair of the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus, spent weeks pressing Meadows to implement the plan.

………

The select committee has also revealed that Meadows and Perry took steps to conceal some of their communications after the election. For example, in a Dec. 2020 text message exchange the committee included in an April court filing, Perry told Meadows he had “just sent you something on Signal,” referring to the encrypted messaging app popular with journalists and government officials.

If there is any justice in Washington, DC,‡ there would be a criminal investigation going on at this moment, but with "Meek Merrick" Garland in charge of the DoJ, I would put the chances at slim to none.

^*44 U.S.C. §2201, 18 USC §641, 18 USC §1361, 18 U.S. Code §2071, 18 U.S.C. §793, 18 U.S. Code § 1512, and 18 U.S.C. §1001, but I am an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit.^† (Link)
† I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!
^‡Spoiler, there is no justice in Washington, DC. Ever Since Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon before he was tried, elite impunity has been the norm.

24.7 Rosemary Woods

It turns out that there is a 7-hour gap White House phone logs on the day of the insurrection.

Richard Nixon and the plumbers, it appears, were complete amateurs.

Either someone erased the logs, or Trump was using a burner phone, and he would only do that if he were doing something that he knew would put him in legal jeopardy.

Otherwise, he'd use the White House phone, because of all the status and power that is implied by the whole process:

Internal White House records from the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol that were turned over to the House select committee show a gap in President Donald Trump’s phone logs of seven hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the building was being violently assaulted, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News.

The lack of an official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes on Jan. 6, 2021 — from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. — means the committee has no record of his phone conversations as his supporters descended on the Capitol, battled overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building, prompting lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for safety.

The 11 pages of records, which consist of the president’s official daily diary and the White House switchboard call logs, were turned over by the National Archives earlier this year to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

The records show that Trump was active on the phone for part of the day, documenting conversations that he had with at least eight people in the morning and 11 people that evening. The seven-hour gap also stands in stark contrast to the extensive public reporting about phone conversations he had with allies during the attack, such as a call Trump made to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — seeking to talk to Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) — and a phone conversation he had with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

Trump has clearly broken some important laws, as a Federal Judge has stated in court, but I don't expect him to see the inside of a courtroom.

Not a Surprise

The New York Times has done a deep dive on the Pentagon's review of allegations of civilian casualties that it caused, and discovered that the reviews were designed and run in a way to systematically under-report civilian deaths.

This is not a surprise.  The reviews were driven by a the needs of the Pentagon public relations operations, and not an attempt to draw lessons from the violence and mayhem inflicted by its policies:

The report that came to the attention of the United States military in April 2017 relayed devastating news from Iraq: More than 30 people, among them women and children, had been killed when aircraft from the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Mosul struck a neighborhood known as Siha.

A civilian casualty cell of the U.S. military, which was charged with assessing reports of civilians killed or wounded in coalition operations, learned of the claim in a Facebook post published on April 11 by the news outlet, the Iraqi Spring Media Center.

The Pentagon began an inquiry, but only a week later its assessment officers couldn’t confirm whether coalition aircraft had targeted that location, and they dismissed the claim, saying Siha was not among “known districts of West Mosul.” There would be no further review.

………

Reporters from The New York Times were able to locate the west Mosul neighborhood using just Google Maps. The name appeared slightly different, as “Sihah” instead of “Siha,” a spelling variation that is common when Arabic words are written in English.

Additionally, a simple Google search revealed several news reports published before April 2017, verifying the existence of Siha and its approximate location.

An analysis of confidential Pentagon documents by The Times’s Visual Investigations unit found that a number of allegations of civilian casualties had been dismissed as “noncredible” based on flawed reviews of evidence — oversights that Times reporters were able to detect using resources widely available to the public. That included websites like Google Maps and Wikimapia, a crowdsourced mapping platform. Typically, U.S. military assessors have access to far more robust resources, such as strike logs and video feeds of airstrikes.

“I’ll tell you what it is: That’s negligence,” said Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon senior intelligence analyst. “That is plain and simple. It is the most basic level of investigation that they should be doing, and not to do it is completely negligent.”

It was not negligent.  It is a deliberate coverup.

The whole chain of command behind this is culpable, and should be relieved of duty pending an investigation.

US Air Force Covered Up Mass Killing of Civilians

In yet ANOTHER instance of the Pentagon covering up incidents that are negligent at best, and war crimes at worst, we have now discovered discovered that the Air Force bombed a crowd of women and children in Syria, killing more than 70, and then they covered it up:

In the last days of the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, when members of the once-fierce caliphate were cornered in a dirt field next to a town called Baghuz, a U.S. military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank.

Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s high-definition field of vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors.

It was March 18, 2019. At the U.S. military’s busy Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, uniformed personnel watching the live drone footage looked on in stunned disbelief, according to one officer who was there.

“Who dropped that?” a confused analyst typed on a secure chat system being used by those monitoring the drone, two people who reviewed the chat log recalled. Another responded, “We just dropped on 50 women and children.”

An initial battle damage assessment quickly found that the number of dead was actually about 70.

The Baghuz strike was one of the largest civilian casualty incidents of the war against the Islamic State, but it has never been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. military. The details, reported here for the first time, show that the death toll was almost immediately apparent to military officials. A legal officer flagged the strike as a possible war crime that required an investigation. But at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike. The death toll was downplayed. Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. And top leaders were not notified.

The Defense Department’s independent inspector general began an inquiry, but the report containing its findings was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike.

………

Even in the extraordinary case of Baghuz — which would rank third on the military’s worst civilian casualty events in Syria if 64 civilian deaths were acknowledged — regulations for reporting and investigating the potential crime were not followed, and no one was held accountable.

This is a feature, not a bug.
 
Until and unless a dedicated agency is created to investigate and prosecute these incidents, one that operates completely outside of the military chain of command, we will continue to have these incidents and the resulting cover-ups.

Burying the Lede

So, Gabriel Debenedetti of the New York Times has reviewed Michael Schmidt's book, DONALD TRUMP V. THE UNITED STATES (Inside the Struggle to Stop a President).

What is interesting how this very chatty review completely buries the lede.

11 paragraphs, and this waits until the penultimate paragraph before this reveal:

More interesting, however, is the constant flow of shocking anecdotes: Schmidt writes that Mitch McConnell fell asleep during a classified briefing on Russia, for example, and he details the F.B.I.’s shambolic reaction to evidence of the hacking in 2016, including an unresolved disagreement over how to handle the material. Describing Trump’s unexpected November 2019 visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, he reports the White House wanted Mike Pence “on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized.” (The vice president never had to take this step.)

(Emphasis mine)

How is an allegation that Trump had a medical emergency that sent him to Walter Reed, and then covered it up not the lede?

H/t Southpaw for tweeting this.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

With an explosion in accusations of abuse in the execution of their duties, the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has come up with a novel solution, it wants to destroy all of its records, much like the British Colonial Dervices when they covered up their brutality as they exited former colonies in Operation Legacy:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently asked the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA), which instructs federal agencies on how to maintain records, to approve its timetable for retaining or destroying records related to its detention operations. This may seem like a run-of-the-mill government request for record-keeping efficiency. It isn’t. An entire paper trail for a system rife with human rights and constitutional abuses is at stake.

ICE has asked for permission to begin routinely destroying 11 kinds of records, including those related to sexual assaults, solitary confinement and even deaths of people in its custody. Other records subject to destruction include alternatives to detention programs; regular detention monitoring reports, logs about the people detained in ICE facilities and communications from the public reporting detention abuses. ICE proposed various timelines for the destruction of these records ranging from 20 years for sexual assault and death records to three years for reports about solitary confinement.

How convenient.

Well, We Finally Knows What Makes a Federal Judge Call Bullsh%$ on the FBI

The FBI was saying that it needed 17 years to accomodate a Freedom of Information Act request.

The judge was having none of it:

Getting answers to Freedom of Information Act requests is often a protracted and tiring process, but how long a wait is too long?

One federal judge just came up with an answer: 17 years.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler bluntly rejected the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s proposal that documentary filmmaker Nina Seavey wait until the year 2034 to get all the law enforcement agency’s records for a request pertaining surveillance of anti-war and civil rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s.

The request involved an unusually large amount of material — about 110,000 pages of records at the FBI and more at other agencies — but Seavey said waiting almost two decades for the complete files wasn’t viable for her.

You can run the numbers: 110,000 pages taking 17 years with 50 weeks a year working 5 days a week, and you hve a processing rate of less than 26 pages a day.

This is bullsh%$, and it's a coverup in an attempt to protect the reputation of J. Edgar Hoover, who should be remembered primarily as a Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria

“Literally, they were talking 17 years out. I’m 60 years old. You can’t do that math,” the George Washington University professor and documentarian told POLITICO this week. “It wasn’t going to work for me.”

The FBI said it has a policy of processing and releasing large requests at a pace of 500 pages a month, while Seavey, represented by D.C. transparency lawyer Jeffrey Light, had proposed 5,000 pages a month. (At one point, the FBI thought it had about 150,000 pages of responsive records, which would’ve meant a 25-year wait.)

Justice Department lawyers and the FBI argued that going faster than 500 pages a month would disrupt the agency’s workflow and create the possibility of a few massive requests effectively shutting down the rest of the their FOIA operation.

Kessler didn’t buy it.

………

Ultimately, Kessler ordered the FBI to process 2,850 pages a month, which should get Seavey the records she’s seeking within three years.

………

It’s not the first FOIA case to produce staggering estimates of how long the government would need to make records public. Last year, the State Department rebuffed a request for emails of aides to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying it could take 75 years to work through the material.

Yeah, that's a f%$3ing coverup too, but tragically, it was a coverup of basically nothing driven by unreasoning paranoia, which created the appearance of guilt.

They Have Learned Nothing, and They Have Forgotten Nothing*

We now have a report on the the police response that created the rioting in Baltimore.

It appears that excessively aggressive police actions, including when the police kettled large numbers of  students leaving high schools at the end of the day at Mondawmin in an misguided attempt at dick swinging, are not on the agenda:

As rioting erupted on Baltimore's streets in April, the city police Command Center — where top decision-makers had gathered to get a handle on the situation — was itself in disarray, according to a new review of the agency's response to the unrest.

In a room designed to hold 30 to 40 people, as many as 100 had gathered, some without a clear role. The crowding was so severe that the department's 10-person Analytical Intelligence Section, which was charged with developing information that could help the department deploy resources and anticipate threats, was blocked from its own equipment — and provided just two computers to do its work. The room was so loud the analysts could barely hear threat tips being relayed to them over the phone.

That environment, described as "chaotic" and "distracting" by some in the room, was just one of many "major shortcomings" in the Baltimore Police Department's handling of the unrest, according to a sweeping review by the Police Executive Research Forum, a highly regarded law enforcement think tank based in Washington.

The group's 79-page report, which then-Commissioner Anthony W. Batts requested this summer, is scheduled to be released publicly on Monday but was provided to The Baltimore Sun.

The report — titled "Lessons Learned from the 2015 Civil Unrest in Baltimore" — provides new critiques of key top-level decisions and details that bolster previous criticism. It also highlights continuing gaps in knowledge about how the worst of the rioting, looting and arson erupted, noting that reviewers were "unable to determine who issued the order to cancel bus service" at Mondawmin Mall on April 27 — a decision that left many students stranded in the area that day.

The report detailed a long list of "major findings," reflected in 56 recommendations for the Police Department to implement. It said planning was inadequate, arrest policies were unclear, equipment was severely lacking, officer training was inadequate, mutual aid agreements with other localities were insufficient or unclear, and orders to officers were not clearly defined. Command positions were also changed at times without notice, causing confusion, the report said.

This is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

They cannot find out who gave the order to kettle what were primarily students trying to get home because it was a relatively low level functionary who has gotten his friends to cover for him, and they are covering for him, because these officers believe that it is essential for them to be kept in their place.

They thought that they were justified in taunting a bunch of adolescent teens and confining them for no reason because they were "Uppity."

Unfortunately, this deeply toxic mindset is the rule, rather than the exception in policing in the United States.

You can find the full report here.

^*This is frequently attributed to the French stateman Tallyrand, but he is not the source.