Pass the Popcorn

The BBC is now pursuing subpoenas to depose Trump's children and Jared Kushner.

Good.

Hopefully, the questions will involve the Trump Org's business practices as well as his statements on January 6.

The BBC is trying to subpoena Donald Trump’s children as it builds its defense against the president’s defamation lawsuit centered on a documentary on the January 6 insurrection.

In a motion filed on Friday, the BBC sought authorization to serve Trump’s two eldest children, Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, with subpoenas for testimony and their records on the events of 6 January 2021.

The BBC, its lawyers wrote in court documents, is entitled to discover Trump’s “intention behind the speech and anything that bears on the impression his audience could have reasonably obtained in listening to the speech”, which includes whether Trump “gave it intentionally or otherwise; the breadth of the audience of the message and impression; and the extent of any resulting injury or harm”.

This is how a real news organization responds to bogus defamation claims.

Keith Olbermann's Back

‮Keith Olbermann's Front‭Olberman has been blogging regularly for a few years now, and he took a break on May 11 to get treatment for atrial fibrillation.

The update, which he posted on Thursday, and which I have embedded below as a YouTube vid, is a one off, but he seems to be recovering nicely, and it looks like he will be back to twice weekly blogs in the next month or so. 

I figured that I should make note of this, if just because it gave me an opportunity to steal a joke. 

A virtual Kewpie doll to any of my reader(s) who can identify the source of the joke.

I agree with his conclusion in this episode, that the headlines have not changed over the past 12 weeks. 

It's kind of depressing actually. 

Speaking of Defamation Lawsuits

The Guardian has just had the defamation suit filed against it by United Healthcare dismissed.

The judge determined that the story that the paper reported, that UHC was bribing nursing homes to decrease transfers to hospitals, was true, and truth is always a defense against defamation. 

A state judge in Delaware has dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought against the Guardian by the UnitedHealth Group.

Delaware superior court judge Calvin Scott’s ruling stemmed from a lawsuit that the US’s largest health insurance conglomerate pursued against the Guardian in May 2025 over an investigation by the outlet which reported that UnitedHealth secretly made payments to nursing homes to reduce hospital transfers for residents.

………

In a ruling issued on Monday, Scott granted the Guardian’s motion to dismiss. And he dismissed all six defamation claims in the lawsuit.

“The article’s reporting of the bonuses as ‘secret’ or made ‘secretly’ or ‘quietly,’ is substantially true,” Scott wrote in one part of the ruling.

In another part, he added that the Guardian “is not required to publish facts just because United would have preferred more favorable facts”.

Yeah, there's a reason that UHC is the most widely loathed health insurance company in America.

Pass the Popcorn

The BBC has secured an order requiring that Donald Trump provide detailed information about his businesses for his defamation lawsuit.

This is a no-brainer from a legal perspective.  In addition to the requirement that the statements be false (absence of malice for public figures), but it also requires a showing of harm.

In this case, in addition demonstrating harm to the delicate feelings of snowflake Trump, this means that Trump has to demonstrate real and measurable financial harms.

Donald Trump must divulge detailed financial information from his many businesses as part of his $10bn defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation, a federal judge ruled during a discovery hearing on Tuesday, according to news reports.

The ruling by US magistrate judge Enjoliqué Lett could open a unique window into the hundreds of businesses owned by Trump’s family trust. It also highlights a potential drawback for Trump’s strategy of bludgeoning critical media with multibillion-dollar lawsuits.

Trump filed a defamation lawsuit late last year seeking $10bn in damages over a 2024 documentary called “Trump, A Second Chance,” which features a scene of the speech he made before his supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. The scene splices lines together to make it appear that Trump directly urged his supporters to attack. The BBC apologized to Trump last year for the misleading edit, but has argued the president’s defamation claims have no merit.

………

Trump’s lawyers are also trying to dodge the forced release of his financial records by limiting the scope of the lawsuit. Alejandro Brito, a Trump lawyer, told Lett on Tuesday that he intends to amend the current complaint, according to Politico. The amended complaint will say the documentary only caused reputational damage, rather than undermining his businesses, making the financial disclosures unnecessary.

But for now, the BBC can move forward with requests for Trump’s financial records. The BBC aims to argue that Trump’s wealth skyrocketed since the documentary aired, contradicting the claim that the documentary undermined his businesses.

I am thinking that if the BBC gets this data and looks into it thoroughly, they should find some convincing data of self-dealing and bribery.

If they find such evidence, they should report on it. 

Support Your Local Police

It appears that an officer at ICE protests used the injury of a journalist to steal her bag full of photographic equipment.

At least time, he was charged.

A law enforcement officer in New Jersey was charged on Thursday with stealing the camera equipment of a photojournalist who was covering a protest outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

The photojournalist, Angelina Katsanis, 25, dropped her camera bag after she was injured at the protest on Saturday, she said in an interview. The bag contained roughly $10,000 worth of equipment, according to a statement from the state attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

The bag was later tracked using an Apple AirTag to the home of Darryl Brown, 43, a sergeant with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the statement said. Sergeant Brown, of Sparta Township, N.J., had been deployed to Delaney Hall during the protest, prosecutors said.

………

A law enforcement officer in New Jersey was charged on Thursday with stealing the camera equipment of a photojournalist who was covering a protest outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

The photojournalist, Angelina Katsanis, 25, dropped her camera bag after she was injured at the protest on Saturday, she said in an interview. The bag contained roughly $10,000 worth of equipment, according to a statement from the state attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

The bag was later tracked using an Apple AirTag to the home of Darryl Brown, 43, a sergeant with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the statement said. Sergeant Brown, of Sparta Township, N.J., had been deployed to Delaney Hall during the protest, prosecutors said.

………

Later that night, Ms. Katsanis and another photographer, who was on assignment for The Times, made their way to a nearby hospital using a wheelchair given to her by a medic at the scene.

From a hospital bed, she watched on her phone as the AirTag in her camera bag traveled across northern New Jersey — on the highway, then to a private residence, and then to a bar close to that home, she said.

Ms. Katsanis said her boyfriend and the other photographer went out to track the AirTag and found that it had been removed from her bag and was on the side of the road. She said that her name and contact information were still clearly written on the AirTag.

“That was a pretty clear sign to me that this was a theft and not just a law enforcement officer holding onto this bag for safekeeping,” said Ms. Katsanis, who reported the missing bag to the attorney general’s office.

This is likely far more common than is reported in the  press. 

They Cannot Do Any Worse Than the Incumbents

I am hopeful that the celebrity gossip news org TMZ has opened a Washington, DC office will improve journalism in the nation's capitol.

This says all you need about the sorry state of, "Real," journalism inside the beltway. 

Even before Bezos destroyed the Washington Post, the media there sucked.

The three members of TMZ’s new Washington, D.C., bureau arrived at Capitol Hill last Monday ready and eager to stick their cameras in lawmakers’ faces and ask them uncomfortable questions. But they were surprised to find that members of the House wouldn’t be returning to work for another day. “I was laughing — ‘Oh, just wait until you see how infrequently these people work,’” said one congressional reporter. “It’s, like, a maximum four-day week.”

The celebrity-gossip outlet’s Washington operation had started off with a bang. The partial government shutdown had enraged TMZ founder Harvey Levin, who thought he might shame Congress back into session by publicizing how lawmakers were spending their recess while federal workers went without pay. The photos did not disappoint. There was a khaki-clad Lindsey Graham at Disney World, holding a bubble wand and boarding Space Mountain. There was Ted Cruz scrolling in his Economy Plus seat. There were members of Congress touring Edinburgh Castle while on a trip to Scotland. “The reaction in D.C. was, ‘Oh, that’s just a codel,’” said Washington communications veteran Nu Wexler, referring to a congressional delegation. It wasn’t clear TMZ understood the distinction or if it cared. “Stories like that will grab people,” said Wexler.

TMZ’s lack of familiarity with Washington’s weird ways is both a drawback and a strength. Its D.C. reporters do not seem to have experience covering Washington. And they are now crowdsourcing their way through the learning curve, asking for help finding bathrooms and restaurants and interview subjects. They’ve also printed out the pictures of House members to study their faces. But as the political paparazzi photos show, they can unearth stories that more jaded reporters have passed over as business as usual. The recent scandal over Eric Swalwell’s much-rumored creepiness and previously unreported sexual misconduct underscored that there is plenty of room for different newsgathering sensibilities.

Here's hoping that they deliver on the promise of a different kind of coverage.

If the entire DC press corps(e) was replaced by monkeys pounding away at typewriters, the quality of the journalism would improve. 

Just When You Thought That the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Was Irrelevant

A gunman broke through some of the security at the WHC dinner, and Trump was rushed off site. (No deaths reported)

We need to return to the days when the threat to the President was biting sarcasm from Stephen Colbert, Michelle Wolfe, and Craig Ferguson. 

We Have Names

The two CBP agents who shot Alex Pretti in the back were Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez.

Spread their names around:

The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.

The records viewed by ProPublica list Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, as the shooters during the deadly encounter last weekend that left Pretti dead and ignited massive protests and calls for criminal investigations.

Both men were assigned to Operation Metro Surge, an immigration enforcement dragnet launched in December that sent scores of armed and masked agents across the city.

CBP, which employs both men, has so far refused to release their names and has disclosed few other facts about the deadly incident, which came days after a different immigration agent shot and killed another Minneapolis protester, a 37-year-old mother of three named Renee Good.

Pretti’s killing, and the subsequent secrecy surrounding the agents involved, comes as the country confronts the consequences of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown. The sweeps in cities across the country have been marked by scenes of violence, against immigrants and U.S. citizens, by agents allowed to hide their identities with masks — an almost unheard of practice in law enforcement. As a result, the public has been kept from one of the chief ways it has to hold officers involved in such altercations accountable: their identity.

………

Ochoa is a Border Patrol agent who joined CBP in 2018. Gutierrez joined in 2014 and works for CBP’s Office of Field Operations. He is assigned to a special response team, which conducts high-risk operations like those of police SWAT units. Records show both men are from South Texas. 

This information should have been made public by DHS, and ProPublica has done a real public service and some really good journalism.

Headline of the Day Week Month Year

Who’s Who at X, the Deepfake Porn Site Formerly Known as Twitter

—The Financial Times, giving a rundown of senior management at the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy's hellsite.

It is notable that this headline appears in the, "Pink Paper."

While nowhere near as stodgy as, for example, the Economist, it is notable just how out of character this is for them, particularly when their rogues' gallery of senior Ecch executives were all in Photoshop clown makeup, except for Elon, who needs no makeup to be a clown.

Someone Owes Me a Screen Wipe

I'm not sure if it is Anthropic AI, or if it is the Wall Street Journal, but the former sent an AI enabled vending machine to the latter, who wrote about the hilarious meltdown that resulted from this.  (Non-pqywall link here, you do not want to miss the article)

Short version, the vending machine lost thousands of dollars, got the news room staff a Betta fish, a PlayStation 5, wine, cigarettes, and underwear.  (They returned the PS 5)

It also tried to order a Taser, which was probably requested by an editor.

Name: Claudius Sennet

Title: Vending machine operator

Experience: Three weeks as a Wall Street Journal operator (business now bankrupt)

Skills: Generosity, persistence, total disregard for profit margins

You’d toss Claudius’s résumé in the trash immediately. Would you be more forgiving if you learned Claudius wasn’t a human but an AI agent?

In mid-November, I agreed to an experiment. Anthropic had tested a vending machine powered by its Claude AI model in its own offices and asked whether we’d like to be the first outsiders to try a newer, supposedly smarter version.

Claudius, the customized version of the model, would run the machine: ordering inventory, setting prices and responding to customers—aka my fellow newsroom journalists—via workplace chat app Slack. “Sure!” I said. It sounded fun. If nothing else, snacks!

Then came the chaos. Within days, Claudius had given away nearly all its inventory for free—including a PlayStation 5 it had been talked into buying for “marketing purposes.” It ordered a live fish. It offered to buy stun guns, pepper spray, cigarettes and underwear.

Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared.

(emphasis mine) 

Go read the rest, and thank our lucky stars that this was the WSJ, and not the New England Journal of Medicine.

Discovery, Baby!

Donald Trump has filed a defamation suit against the Pulitzer Prize Board because they gave awards to stories that said bad thing things about him.

The board has responded to the lawsuit with extensive demands for discovery, including tax returns, prescription and psychological records, and a complete listing of all of his assets and liabilities.

I'm pretty sure that Donald Trump will be loath to turning over ANY of this information.

I am amused. 

Headline of the Day

SUSIE WILES IS A UVALDE COP

—No More Mister Nice Blog, on what Trump's White House Chief of Staff's tell all interview with Vanity Fair means.

This is a marvelous metaphor.

It perfectly explains the perfidy of Wiles' actions.

She knows what should be done, but is unwilling to take the risk of losing her proximity to power. 

Headline of the Day

Jurors in Sandwich Thrower Case Found Charges ‘Bunch of Baloney’

—Bloomberg

I have only one thing to add, whoever wrote this hed should never have to buy themselves another drink.

Stay Classy

I am referring, of course, to Donald Trump, who, on Air Force 1, responded to questions from a reporter by calling her "Piggy".

In the old days, politicians actually showed some wit when dealing with the press and insulting people.

Hell, even the Peter Capaldi character Malcolm Tucker is classier than this sh%$-heel.

Donald Trump, who has a history of making extremely personal attacks on female journalists, referred to a Bloomberg News correspondent as a “piggy” during a clash onboard Air Force One on Friday.

While the remark did not initially get much attention, it picked up some traction on Tuesday and has drawn backlash from fellow journalists, including some who have previously been attacked by Trump themselves.


Catherine Lucey, Bloomberg’s White House correspondent, had taken advantage of a press opportunity with the president – known as a gaggle – to ask a question about the unfolding Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the possibility of the House voting to release all of the files related to his case, which now appears likely.

As Lucey started to ask why Trump was behaving the way he was “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files”, Trump pointed at her and said: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”

And the religious right sees him as the epitome of virtue BECAUSE he is a racist dirt bag,. 

Worst timeline ever.

In Union There is Strength

The University of Indiana is upset that their newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, is reporting on news, so the university admins  decided to stop printing the paper except for 5 advertising fluff editions a year for events attracting alumni. (It would remain online)

When the journals at the paper said that they would front page stories about problems at the university in their homecoming edition, administrators shut down printing completely.

In response, management at the Purdue Exponent, who own their own printing press, printed the homecoming issue of the Daily Student and got the copies back to campus so that they could kiosks in time for homecoming.

To hed quotes Aesop.  (Probably, we don't know if Aesop ever really existed)

Last week, Indiana University administrators fired the school newspaper’s (Indiana Daily Student) advisor and ordered students to stop printing the paper.

The student journalists say that University administrators didn’t like the student paper’s decision to increasingly criticize University President Pamela Whitten’s decision to coddle the authoritarian Trump administration, or, at best, remain silent as the Trump administration and state leaders take direct aim at free expression, the First Amendment, and any curriculum teaching about race or gender discrimination.

Enter students at the Purdue student paper, The Exponent, who stepped up and traveled two hours from West Lafayette to Bloomington to help Indiana University students deliver a physical paper to local students anyway:

………

Like many broader mainstream media outlets, what academic administrators want is a sort of pseudo-news that’s devoid of anything that might upset anyone (think of a Ken Doll with all the important bits sanded off to a smooth hump). A sort of feckless simulacrum of journalism that focuses on “safe” issues that, most importantly, don’t upset right wing Americans:

 “According to an Oct. 7 email the IndyStar obtained, Rodenbush passed on guidance from the Media School administration that the IDS’s print publication should solely focus on a special theme, such as homecoming or fall sports, and contain “no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage.”

It's gone viral now, so I think that now that this whole sordid affair has gone viral, President Whitten is not oong for her position.

Maybe instead, she should have just made Bari Weiss editor in chief. 

And They Are So Dumb! ⃰

You know, when a reporter makes a post commenting on a story from the New York Times noting indications of selective prosecutions and prosecutorial misconduct, it's best not to get into a colloquy with that reporter about the veracity of this story if you are the "attorney" who made the presentment to the grand jury.

But we are talking about Lindsey Halligan here, the faux acting US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, so instead, she sent numerous "self destructing" Signal messages to Lawfare reporter, and Harvard trained lawyer, Anna Bower, which were dutifully screen shotted and reported on.

When Bauer contacted the DoJ while she was writing the story, Halligan wrote to her to say retroactively that this was all off the record.

Yeah, it don't work that way.

^*Why yes, I am quoting Blazing Saddles.  It's the line delivered bv Cleavon Little after successfully taking himself hostage, "Ooh, baby, you are so talented! ……… And they are so dumb!"

Headline of the Day

Chief Justice John Roberts Is Trying His Darnedest to Make Trump a Dictator

—Charlie PierceEsquire

Yep. Pretty much.

I Am Unworthy

I posted about the Washington, DC hero Sean Charles Dunn, aka "Sandwich Guy," yesterday, and today, I was made aware of my inadequacies as a writer by Grady Martin at Current Affairs:

Assault with a Deli Weapon

Damn, that's good.

That is an amazing hed. 

The Vampire Loses

Peter Thiel, (remenber he is a literal vampire) and his private stalking company Palantir, just took a loss on an attempt by Colorado lawmakers to give him immunity from lawsuits.

It appears that the good folks at Lever News got wind of this, and published a story about this, and suddenly people are running away from the plan.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers pushing stealth legislation to shield artificial intelligence giants from lawsuits abruptly backtracked and voted to defang the provision hours after it was exposed by The Lever.

In Democratic-controlled Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis (D) had called an emergency legislative session to force lawmakers to consider initiatives rolling back parts of the state’s first-in-the-nation artificial intelligence regulations. One of the bills up for consideration included a seemingly innocuous line that experts say in practice could have prohibited district attorneys, watchdog groups, and citizens from filing consumer-protection lawsuits against AI giants. 

That includes Denver-based Palantir Technologies, a surveillance-tech giant cofounded by one of President Donald Trump’s biggest billionaire boosters that the Trump administration has reportedly hired to compile data on Americans, prompting privacy concerns.

Hours after The Lever’s report on the provision, the legislation was amended to explicitly state that it will not interfere “with rights available to consumers pursuant to” the section of the Colorado Protection Act that allows individuals to bring AI-related lawsuits under the law.

The new law is still bad, but is no longer as bad as it was.

 

Fat, Corrupt, and Stupid Is No Way to Go Through Life, Son

Sometimes, a subject hands a reporter a story inadvertently. 

In this case, NYC Mayor Eric Adams stooge Winnie Greco literally handed a story to the City Hall reporter for The City, Katie Honan.  It was an envelope full of cash inside of an open potato chip snack bag.

It appears that someone was browsing MySpace instead of listening to the lecture in Corruption 101:

A former top City Hall advisor and current campaign confidante to Mayor Eric Adams attempted to give money to a reporter from THE CITY following a campaign event in Harlem Wednesday.

The failed payoff — a wad of cash in a red envelope stuffed inside an opened bag of Herr’s Sour Cream & Onion ripple potato chips — was made by Winnie Greco, a longtime Adams ally who resigned last year from her position as the mayor’s liaison to the Asian community after she was targeted in multiple investigations. She resurfaced recently as a consistent presence in his re-election campaign.

On Wednesday, City Hall reporter Katie Honan spotted Greco near the announcement of the opening of Adams’ newest campaign office, in Harlem. Greco later texted Honan after the event when she spotted her again and asked her to meet across the street from the campaign office next to a TD Bank.

Greco and Honan walked to the Whole Foods next door. While inside the store, Greco handed Honan the opened bag of chips with the top crumpled closed. Honan, thinking it was an offer of a light snack, told Greco more than once she could not accept the chips, but Greco insisted that she keep them.

The two parted ways. Before entering a nearby subway station, Honan opened the bag and discovered a red envelope inside stuffed with cash, at least one $100 bill and several $20 bills. The reporter then called Greco and told her she could not accept the money and asked if she was still nearby so she could give it back. Greco said she’d left the area. Honan told her she had to take the money back, and Greco said they could meet at some point in Chinatown.

The reporter then texted Greco, “I can’t take this, when can I give it back to you?” She did not get a response.

In an interview later Wednesday, THE CITY asked Greco what her intention was in handing money to the reporter. In response, she said she’d made “a mistake” and apologized over and over.

“I make a mistake,” she said. “I’m so sorry. It’s a culture thing. I don’t know. I don’t understand. I’m so sorry. I feel so bad right now. I’m so sorry, honey.”

She then called THE CITY back, advising that we call her attorney, Steven Brill, and adding, “Can we forget about this? I try to be a good person. Please. Please. Please don’t do in the news nothing about me.”

Not only the lamest bribe attempt ever, but also the lamest attempt an alibi ever.

It's a complete mind-f%$# but in comparison, Andrew Cuomo looks good when compared to Eric Adams.