HOLD HANDS DAY UPDATES
But Wash Them First - COVID's On The Uptick!
-The back and forth between Department of Justice attorneys and the current attorneys representing Thrice-Indicted (so far) Ex-President (TIsfEP) Trump pretty clearly illustrated the strategies as preliminary motions get made in charges related to the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Trump attorneys waited until five minutes before the deadline to file their response to a DoJ motion to keep discovered information that needs to be shared to the defense confidential. Trump's team essentially asked that they be allowed to share info as they felt they needed to - and DoJ took less than three hours to respond, essentially calling the defense motion a move to allow them to try the case in the media. Judge Tanya Chutkan then took less than an hour to schedule a hearing for this Friday - which DoJ was cool with (they literally said they were ready "anytime") but which Team Trump was sad with (they wanted the whole weekend, which is the standard Trump legal strategy of incessant delays). So ... Friday.
-Speaking of discovery, the New York Times reports they obtained a memo written by Ken Chesebro - whom most believe is "Co-Conspirator No. 5" in the Trump indictment - that outlines in detail the plot to seat unelected Electoral College delegates and seat them to count their votes on January 6, 2021. The memo is helpfully labelled "bold" and "controversial," and is a document that the January 6 Commission had heard of but could not secure a copy of. How that may affect Chesebro's status in the trial or what he may do in response remains to be seen ...
-This is good, because other legal strategists remain perplexed at the surprise request by Judge Aileen Cannon to have DoJ justify why there are more than one grand juries investigating the classified documents charges in FL, with one MSNBC observer noting Cannon's request came an hour after an ex-Trump attorney raised the issued on a Fox News show. Cannon, a Trump appointee who attempted to give Trump a huge advantage as part of the investigation last year only to have the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reverse and admonish Cannon's try. Should Cannon rule against DoJ on this issue (because there are secret grand juries all the time, and there is a question about whether Cannon ... erred in revealing it) some wonder whether a request to move the case out of Cannon's court may occur.
-And in GA, Fulton County DA Fani Wills announced yesterday that charges related to the investigation into Trump's attempt to find 11,780 non-existent Trump votes in 2020 to try to throw the state to Trump instead of the state's winner, Joe Biden, will begin next week. Most think that case will involve more people than Trump, and the case being a state case, one that could not be touched with pardons should Trump or a Trump acolyte win in 2024.
-Speaking of 2024, any question of whether anger over the Dobbs decision taking away a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion or not was answered with a resounding NO! yesterday in Ohio. The Republican-created initiative designed to make a change to the OH Constitution require a supermajority 60% was defeated 57%-43% in an election that saw more voters turn out for this election than the 2022 primary that included two primaries for an open Senate seat (sadly won by fiction writer turned Trump lap dog J.D. Vance, who hilariously predicted yesterday's election would be a "close victory" for the GOP). (That this election took place in August - a month the GOP once said no elections could be set in - is especially schadenfreud-y).
-This election was created to stop another voter initiative set for this November that would reverse the GOP's six-week ban on abortion and reinstate choice in the red state, with polling paralleling the margin of victory in this election. Other states - and Democratic parties, possibly - are likely to have taken note.
-And if you think Fox noticed, well ... kinda ... as reports are that the OH special election results were not mentioned once during yesterday's primetime block, as the network opted for 47 mentions of You Know Damn Well Who They Talked About - Because Everything From The Hurricane In Hawaii To Lizzo Becoming A Jerk Is Because of HIM - HUNTER BIDEN (DUUUM DUUUM DDDUUMMMBBB!!!!!).
-To close, if you are now seeing memes featuring Jack Smith or the statue of Martin Luther King Jr. holding a folding chair, well, that relates to a little incident that went viral in the state of AL over the weekend. Over the weekend, a pontoon boat docked on a waterfront pier in Montgomery inadvertently, and a black security guard asked the boat owners to please move the boat so a Riverboat could dock there instead - since the pontoon boat was docked in the wrong place. Three white boaters in the pontoon did not want to do that, arguing for 30 minutes while the Riverboat waited - at which point the boaters attacked the dock worker. That triggered a 20-minute brawl that featured a group of Black men coming to the aid of the security worker, who were charged with misdemeanors yesterday. Video of the incident is all over the web, particularly TikTok if you want to seek it out.
-The purveyors of this update do not condone such violence ... even if it privately smiles over the guys who started the fight having their arses HANDED TO THEM when the entire fight was said and done ...
-Hence, the folding chair, which was used in the punch-up.
-On this date in 1173, construction began on the tower in Pisa, Italy that eventually started leaning. On this date in 1854, WALDEN was published. On this date in 1930, Betty Boop makde her animated movie debut. On this date in 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, Japan. On this date in 1969, actress Sharon Tate and four others were murdered in their home by followers of cult leader Charles Manson. On this date in 1974, Gerald Ford became President after the resignation of Richard Nixon over the Watergate scandal. And on this date in 2014, a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed Black teenager named Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.
-Happy Birthday to John Dryden, P.L. Travers, Ralph Houk, Robert Shaw, Bob Cousy, Rod Laver, David Steinberg, Ken Norton, Sam Elliott, Jim Kiick, Chris Haney, Pete Thomas, Doug Williams, Melanie Griffith, Kurtis Blow, Michael Kors, Brad Gilbert, John "Hot Rod" Williams, Whitney Houston, Brett Hull, Hoda Kotb, Deion Sanders, Gillian Anderson, McG, Divine Brown, Chris Cuomo, Audrey Tatou, Adewale Ogunleye, Tyson Gay, Anna Kendrick, and JaMarcus Russell.
-Rest in Peace/Rest in Power to Hieronymus Bosch, Hugo Boss, Hermann Hesse, Joe Orton, Dmitri Shostakovich, Walter O'Malley, Jerry Garcia, Gregory Hines, Bernie Mac, and Frank Gifford.