Four Proud Boys members have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy. “Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Dominic Pezzola and Zachary Rehl each faced nine counts. All but Pezzola were found guilty on the rare charge of seditious conspiracy under a Civil War-era statute. Tarrio, Biggs, Nordean and Rehl were also found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.” The jury is still debating charges for Pezzola.
There have now been fourteen seditious conspiracy convictions resulting from January 6. Andrew Weissmann on MSNBC says that this is piling a lot of pressure on Jack Smith.
See also Aaron Blake at WaPo, Trump is inviting Dems to make 2024 about Jan. 6. And they’re obliging. No paywall.
We also have more of the adventures of Clarence Thomas, from ProPublica: Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Private School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition.
See also Philip Bump at WaPo, The low cost (for a rich person) of sponsoring a Supreme Court justice. (No paywall.)
See also Emails Reveal ‘Jaw-Dropping’ Herschel Walker Money Scandal at The Daily Beast.
When Herschel Walker emailed a representative for billionaire industrialist and longtime family friend Dennis Washington in March 2022, he seemed to be engaging in normal behavior for a political candidate: He was asking for money.
But unbeknownst to Washington and the billionaire’s staff, Walker’s request was far more out of the ordinary. It was something campaign finance experts are calling “unprecedented,” “stunning,” and “jaw-dropping.” Walker wasn’t just asking for donations to his campaign; he was soliciting hundreds of thousands of dollars for his own personal company—a company that he never disclosed on his financial statements.
Emails obtained by The Daily Beast—and verified as authentic by a person with knowledge of the exchanges—show that Walker asked Washington to wire $535,200 directly to that undisclosed company, HR Talent, LLC.
And the emails reveal that not only did Washington complete Walker’s wire requests, he was under the impression that these were, in fact, political contributions.
The Daily Standard (UK) is reporting that Trump says he is cutting his Ireland trip short in order to “confront” his accuser in the E. Jean Carroll case. If true, this would be huge news, as all previous indications were that he was not going to show up at trial. Of course, maybe by “confronting” he’s just going to bloviate to U.S. media. Maybe he’s realized he’s losing the trial.
Now, I have an announcement. When I left New York in 2016 I put my name on all kinds of wait lists for subsidized senior apartments, and one has finally come through. So it looks like I’ll be moving back to the state of New York in the very near future, which means blogging will be light. And it also means I absolutely have to park Mahablog in a cheaper spot, because even thought the rent is low I’ll still be living on a super tight budget. I have a place in mind, but step one means I’ll be tweaking the site a bit to reduce its size — it’s over a gigabyte now — before I move it, then it will be offline for about a week while being moved. I’m not sure when this will happen, but it will be pretty soon. I will warn you in advance. But I will be back, eventually!
Congratulations on your move back to NYC! But how can you give all them freedumbs that Missouri has to offer, children purchasing guns, permitless open carry, guns on busses, churches, bars? Good luck on the move!
New York Ryan Adams
Ahh! Back to civilization. Congratulations!
In the meantime, we'll all miss your work.
Congratulations on being able to move back to Civilization!
I am looking at doing the opposite – leaving California for the hinterland in a few months. I quit my job in Jan 2022, took social security, and sadly can't afford to stay. Had I done a better job of managing my finances over my lifetime, this exodus would not be necessary. And so it's nearly time for me to leave the protected hothouse and leave "paradise", but at least I'll be on more solid ground financially. I'm both dreading it and yet seeing it as a huge chance for growth, to not get caught up in the deepening chaos, which won't be easy. The words of the Mamas and Papas will always echo in my mind: "I'd be safe and warm, if I was in LA". They had no idea how prescient those words would be, 60 or so years hence.
Some days ago, Joyce Vance said that the Proud Boys verdict to come is significant. The fact that Tarrio was charged – who wasn't physically at the riot, he was sitting in jail in Maryland – means that the ringleaders further up the food chain are also susceptible to getting charged with sedition. It's an important threshold that's been crossed. This is the nature of the pressure on Jack Smith.
It's a shame that cameras aren't allowed at the E Jean Carroll trial. Trump's appearance seems like a Hail Mary attempt to avert conviction. A defense attorney would need to be pretty desperate or naive to put him on the stand.
Welcome back to NY!!!
What'll I do for a week or so without you, maha, and and your great website?!?
I'll be in intertube rehab, jonesing for my maha fix – that's where!
Oh sure, there are other great websites.
But a day without maha is like a day without heroi…
Uh, without sunshine!
Best of luck with the move! 🙂
Hey maha,
I forgot to ask you if the other three Democrats in MO know you're leaving?
You go girl. Thank you for the time you spent in flyover country. Tell them the total hell we endure here. Many of them are in morning because they do not have Tucker Carlson to tell them not just how to think but how to believe.
How can they not understand that politics and religion do not mix? Only the history that they avoid, and ban would teach them the truth, and fiction gets them by.
With you talent and status the money should flow. You are a big fish that deserves to rule in a big pond.
And you will. We are all counting on you.
I'm also Congratulations on your return to Civilization.
A suggestion, if I may be so bold. Moving the site while you're packing for NY is two moves at once. Depending on timing, you may be out of touch while the migration is in progress.
I'm willing to contribute if you want to delay the site migration. If you have a dollar figure that you need, if we meet it, you can procrastinate on that. If we don't kick in enough, you have a few bucks extra for the physical move.
I continue to think the convictions for J6 will make an armed insurrection less likely. There's some serious time being handed down on a few cases and about a thousand others who were located and prosecuted. Even if they got a light sentence, the process of getting a lawyer and having to defend is disruptive. Some who got away with a light sentence lost jobs and were rejected by family and friends.
I think Trump is offering pardons for the J6 criminals in the hopes he can get a riot going again if he needs one (or three, considering prosecutions will be in three jurisdictions.) Doing time in a federal jail with large numbers of potentially violent people of a dark complexion is the worst nightmare for these MAGA nuts.
Regarding Trump's return to "confront" his accuser… as Obama once said, "Please, proceed." Trump may expect he will charm or frighten the jury into delivering a "Not Guilty" verdict by showing up. Had Trump shown the respect to the jury and court of sitting through the trial, he might be able to take the stand in his own defense and make it work. (If the jury was willing to disregard what they saw in the clips from the deposition.) If Trump thinks he can swing by in the last days of the trial with a forceful denial and reverse the momentum of the last two weeks… I'm willing to take an even-odds bet that Trump goes down in flames IF HE TESTIFIES.
It looks like foreign journalists hit Trump with two questions back-to-back on the trial. It may be that Trump thought if he didn't show, no one would notice even the trial happened. Fox has obliged so far, not mentioning Carrol's name ten times in the last few weeks. But everyone else, including in Europe, is watching. Trump has a town hall with CNN next week. It's supposed to be a Republicans-only event, I think related to the primary. If he's been found guilty, it's gonna come up.
If the Walker story is true, I hope charges are filed. If the money was wired and the instructions were deceptive, is this a federal crime?
congratulations on your upcoming move!
You will be able to get a hard copy of the NYT every day. Yes, that is spoiled, but you deserve it.
welcome back!
Yay, more voices for the J6 prison choir! Hope your move goes well.
Funny, I was just daydreaming about applying to a job with similar pay to what I’m making now at the Winchester plant in Independence, MO. Nerd Wallet says the cost of living is 4% lower in Kansas City than where I live in upstate NY. Probably can't free myself from this place yet. 10 more years till retirement…
Congratulations on the move Maha! Good things do happen to good people like you.
@doug wrote: I continue to think the convictions for J6 will make an armed insurrection less likely
What I've been reading is that the right's tactics have shifted to the states, the "laboratories of autocracy" as they're called. In much the way that Senators have to cater to everyone in the state but Representatives don't, so the Federal government has a lot of inertia going for it that individual states do not. And so another Federal-level J6 insurrection is much less likely than individual states either going full wingnut OR the sane people figure out how to take control.
I was listening to an interview of Mallory McMorrow, the Michigan State Senator whose full-throated rebuttal to right-wing nonsense went viral last year. She revealed that the key to the Dems wresting control of the state government in Michigan was the appointment of an independent board to redraw the state’s legislative districts, ending gerrymandering in Michigan. I think this came about through a referendum, not sure.
In Wisconsin a few weeks ago, in the most expensive, most closely watched race of 2023, Janet Protasiewicz won a seat to their State Supreme Court by a landslide. She tacitly campaigned on ending gerrymandering, which has radically distorted Wisconsin politics. She has an uphill battle, but it’s the only real bit of leverage available to turn Wisconsin around.
Other states are much more hopeless, where Republicans don’t need gerrymandering to keep the state captive.
All of this is aided and abetted by the Supreme Court whose “leave it to the states” decisions are hastening the breakup of the USA.
Yikes – never thought about how armed insurrection at the State level would play out. From what [little?] I know about our Constitution, I'd have to guess that the Federal Government would have no authority to intervene unless the Governor requested help. Feds would still have authority to enforce Federal Law, but that could get *real* messy.
Congrats on moving back to NYC, where you'd obviously rather be. I just hope you're not a Yankees fan…
More news, from the top of my Yahoo feed:
"No mention of Ginni.' Conservative activist directed money to wife of Justice Clarence Thomas (yahoo.com)
And this was no random "activist", it was Leonard Leo, top power broker between GOP and Federalist Society for *decades*. And the dirt sounds more obviously *illegal* than most of the other allegations against Thomas and the Texas Zillionaire; it was intentionally hidden by Leo.
IMO, this is *great* news. It's highly unlikely that this is the only time Leo did stuff like this; more attention from good investigative journalists will likely turn up lotsa similar shenanigans, related to lotsa other judges (Supreme and Other). Best case scenario: RICO charges against The Federalist Society, and impeachment of dozens of their appointees on various Federal and State Courts.
Hmm, this also fits right into the theory I suggested yesterday – that the GOP Machine has gotten dumber recently (independent of the MAGA Zombies). In this case, though, Leo has been around for a long time, and probably isn't [much] dumber than when he started; so maybe the institutional decline is due to sloppiness resulting from too much success. In any case, the news about Leo might lead to unraveling a *lot* of other clearly illegal stuff.