As promised, I did not watch the Republican debate last night. I might have done so for a significant amount of money, but I got no offers.

So I’m reading the reviews. The first thing I wanted to know is, did anything significant happen that might change the trajectory of anyone’s campaign? And the answer appears to be, probably not.

Rhonda Santis didn’t catch fire. Early this morning I saw some conservative commentary that labored mightly to put some lipstick on him, but then I read this in National Review of all places, by Christian Schneider.

DeSantis, on the other hand, was shaky throughout. The one-liner-o-matic machine was belching smoke all night, as he tried desperately to resemble an actual human. It is a tough act for the Florida governor — if he were to flame out of this race (and recent results haven’t been good), it means returning to a state where he set a bonfire of bridges on his way to becoming a national candidate. Imagine the pathetic image of poor Ron walking back to his state, gluteus in hand, and having to repair relations with Disney and his university system.

Does DeSantis have any genuine supporters left who aren’t on his campaign staff?

Mr. Schneider of National Review didn’t care for Vivek Ramaswamy, either. “If you listened to what he actually said, Ramaswamy exposed himself as a fraud,” Schneider wrote. “His takes on foreign affairs sound like Wikipedia articles that have been translated from English to Hungarian, then back to English.” But that won’t matter, because the target audience doesn’t care about policy, especially foreign policy. I take it Ramaswamy revealed himself to be an aggressively ignorant asshole, but that’s what the MAGA crowd likes. I’d say he has a shot at being Trump’s new Veep pick, but only if he’s willing to convert from Hinduism to evangelicalism first.

Conversely, Nikki Haley impressed some of the old-school Republicans at National Review, which means the base will continue to ignore her.

At the other end of the scale, I haven’t heard a word about Tim Scott in any of the reviews. I assume he was there. It sounds as if Mike Pence was being more aggressive than usual. Chris Christie was less entertaining than some had hoped. But other than a bump for Ramaswamy I doubt anything was accomplished last night.

Word is that Trump’s pretaped interview with Tucker Carlson had Tucker fantasizing about violence — in particular, Tucker predicted “they” will soon try to assasinate Trump — and Trump basically ignoring Tucker and rambling on about his usual grievances. Tucker also spent time on the pressing question of whether Jeffrey Epstein was murdered. Trump is claiming some huge million-something number of views of the interview, but this Yahoo article explains why counts of “views” on X are meaningless. It appears that the number of people who engaged in any way with the interview is in the hundreds of thousands, but not millions.

Best review I’ve seen is at Talking Points Memo, by David Kurtz. Just go read it.

Trump is still expected to surrender at the Fulton County Jail during prime time this evening.

In other news: It now appears to be official — Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash caused by an intentional explosion, the Associated Press is reporting.  “In all, the other passengers included six of Prigozhin’s lieutenants, along with the three-member flight crew,” the AP says. I guess falling out of high-rise buildings was getting old. .

There will be a GOP presidential candidate’s debate, hosted by Fox News, on Wednewsday in Milwaukee. There’s another one scheduled for September 27 in Simi Valley, California, to be hosted by Fox Business and Univision.

I have no intention of watching either one. I’m sure somebody will post highlights.

Trump intends to skip the first debate. Instead, he’s going to be interviewed online by Tucker Carlson. I’ve just learned this interview will be prerecorded and released at the same time as the televised debate. It would be great fun if the official debate gets a lot more viewers than the interview, however.

It’s tempting to dismiss the GOP nomination contest as Trump and the Seven or So Dwarves. But it’s not impossible for one or two of the not-Trump candidates to break out of the pack and become serious contenders after the debates. No, I’m not going to guess who that might be. But televised debates have been known to elevate minor candidates while deflating major ones.

The candidates who for sure will be debating Wednesday are Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy. Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Doug Burgum. Mike Pence allegedly qualified, but some news sources still have him listed as maybe.  Chris Christie is maybe still a maybe. Asa Hutchinson, Francis Suarez, and Will Hurd are probably nots. But that could change.

Note also that the big money donors of the GOP are backing away from Trump. They would prefer someone who could pass for a normal human being, which leaves out most of the current field. But there’s a lot of interest in Glenn Youngkin and Brian Kemp. Meanwhile, Trump is burning through donors’ money paying for his legal defense(s). Even if he’s the nominee and stays out of jail, he’s not going to have much left to pay for a national general election campaign. Although maybe the big money guys will bail him out.

There is roughly eleven months before the 2024 RNC Convention in Milwaukee. A whole lot could happen in those months that none of us anticipate. But I can’t imagine how the Republican Party is not royally bleeped right now.  If Trump is the nominee, they’re bleeped. If he isn’t the nominee he’s likely to attempt an independent run, and the GOP is still bleeped.

You probably heard that Trump had promised us a news conference on Monday in which he would reveal the long-hidden proof that there was voter fraud in Georgia. Now his lawyers are begging him to cancel it. ABC News reports:

Sources tell ABC News that Trump’s legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it.

Those lawyers are no fun at all.

“A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete & will be presented by me at a major News Conference at 11:00 A.M. on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey,” Trump wrote on his social media platform.

Georgia’s Republican governor responded to that with his own social media post declaring, “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward — under oath — and prove anything in a court of law.”

So maybe Trump had real evidence all along and was keeping it hidden just in case he was indicted in Georgia while running for another shot at the White House, and then he could prove his masterful mastery of time and space by the BIG REVEAL.

Or not. I was really looking forward to Trump’s making a big fool of himself on Monday. It’s possible he won’t listen to his lawyers and release the “proof” anyway. We can hope.

What I was going to write about — of late there have been two kinds of Republicans — those who are frantic to defend and protect Trump at all cost, and those who, um, aren’t. Right-wing WaPo columnist and all-around waste of space Henry Olsen wrote,

Republican leaders rushed to defend Donald Trump after a Georgia grand jury levied charges against the former president for his scheme to interfere in the state’s 2020 presidential election. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy described the indictment as a “desperate sham.” Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said it was a “WITCH HUNT” and that Trump “did nothing wrong.”

See also Republicans rally to Donald Trump’s defense after Georgia indictment at The Guardian, which documents the various degrees of gaslighting being employed on Trump’s behalf. For example,

New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a member of House leadership, insisted Trump “had every legal right to challenge the results of the election” he conclusively lost.

She added: “This blatant election interference by the far left will not work, President Trump will defeat these bogus charges and win back the White House in 2024.”

In the Senate, Ted Cruz of Texas, in 2016 Trump’s closest rival for the Republican presidential nomination, said he was “pissed”. Cruz also called the Georgia indictment “disgraceful” and repeated McCarthy’s “weaponization” complaint – a party talking point.

Stefanik didn’t use to be as much of a right-wing toadie as she is now. Her district is way upstate and mostly rural, I understand, but it’s still New York. Will this crapola really help her keep her seat? We’ll see.

And then there are the other Republicans. Many elected Republicans of Georgia are pretty much done with Trump. They are having no trouble saying the 2020 election results were legitimate and Trump shouldn’t have tried to strong-arm them into “fixing” it. I suspect they still blame him for costing them two U.S. Senate seats. But they also noticed that voters in 2020 really weren’t into the election denial thing. Since most of them seem okay with prosecuting Trump, I hope that means they won’t use their new law to remove D.A. Fani Willis from office.

And with some exceptions like Ted Cruz and Miz Lindsey Graham (and Josh Hawley, who is making even less sense than usual), most Republicans in the U.S. Senate so far are not rushing to microphones to complain about the Georgia indictment.

The only thing that’s safe to say is that the 2024 contest for the Republican presidential nomination is going to be the most bleeped up in the history of presidential nominations.

Regarding Georgia, there’s a lot of talk about the several indictees getting their cases moved to federal courts. From what I’m reading, about all this would accomplish is to broaden the jury pool beyond Fulton County. The case would still be tried under Georgia RICO laws, and convictions would still be out of reach of federal pardons.

Pardons in Georgia are hard to come by. Jim Newell writes in Slate,

Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, does not have the authority to hand out pardons. Under the Georgia Constitution, a five-person State Board of Pardons and Paroles is “vested with the power of executive clemency, including the powers to grant reprieves, pardons, and paroles; to commute penalties; to remove disabilities imposed by law; and to remit any part of a sentence for any offense against the state after conviction.”

Even if that board were stacked with appointees who were clones of Donald Trump, the board has a very strict interpretation of what a pardon is. To qualify for a pardon, an applicant must have already completed his or her sentence five years prior to applying. They must have lived a law-abiding life during those five years, not have any pending charges, and have paid all fines in full. A “pardon,” in the Georgia state government’s parlance, is “an order of official forgiveness and is granted to those individuals who have maintained a good reputation in their community following the completion of their sentence,” according to the pardon board’s website. It “does not expunge, remove or erase the crime from your record. It may serve as a means for a petitioner to advance in employment or education.” In other words, it’s a piece of paper that would do little else besides get Trump a job as a line cook at 97 years old.

Changing that setup would require amending the Constitution, and Georgia Republicans on the whole don’t seem to be in a big toot to do that.

In other news: You probably heard that at some point Jack Smith got hold of Trump’s private Twitter messages. That was awhile back, and had there been anything juicy in them that probably would have bee included in indictments already. But Elon Musk stupidly tried to stall a warrant for the message files, and according to Marcy at Emptywheel, Musk met with Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy while stalling. Was that to protect Trump, or to protect Jordan and McCarthy, who probably had messages in those files?

In Rudy Giuliani news: One of the biggest meltdowns in political history continues. See Rudy Giuliani made desperate appeal to Trump to pay his legal bills and Rudy Giuliani pocketed $300,000 from farmers investing in anti-Biden documentary that was never made, lawsuit claims

Here is the text of the newest indictment. And here are all of the people being charged in the Georgia indictment, courtesy of Atlanta News First:

• former President Donald Trump
• lawyer Rudy Guliani
• lawyer John Eastman
• former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows
• lawyer Kenneth Chesebro
• former Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division Jeffrey Clark
• lawyer Jenna Ellis
• lawyer Ray Smith III
• lawyer Bob Cheeley
• Trump campaign staffer Michael Roman
• former Chair of the Georgia Republican Party David Shafer
• Georgia State Senator Shawn Still
• police chaplain Stephen Lee
• Black Voices for Trump leader Harrison Floyd
• lawyer Sidney Powell
• publicist Trevian Kutti
• poll watcher Scott Hall
• former Coffee County elections official Misty Hampton
• former chair of the Coffee County Republican Party Cathleen Latham

Newsweek provides a bit more detail about what these people are alleged to have done.

Aaron Blake at WaPo says that Trump is now looking at a total of 91 criminal charges. He also says that the Georgia indictments focus on false speech and oaths.

From a couple of experts at the New York Times:

Georgia has one of the most capacious RICO statutes in the country. The state’s Legislature enacted it specifically to “apply to an interrelated pattern of criminal activity” and mandated courts to “liberally construe” it to protect the state and its citizens from harm. Under the law, prosecutors can charge a sprawling criminal enterprise that even includes individuals who may not have known “of the others’ existence,” as one court put it.

Here, the statute may be triggered by violations of an array of federal crimes as well as over 40 charges specific to Georgia, including forgery, false statements and influencing witnesses. …

…The overall charge includes four core schemes. The first was to pressure government officials to advance the objective of securing Georgia’s electoral votes for Mr. Trump, even though he lost. For the evidence here, in addition to Mr. Trump’s call to Mr. Raffensperger, Ms. Willis details other efforts by Mr. Trump and his co-defendants, ranging from Mr. Giuliani’s pressuring of state legislators to Mr. Meadows’s pressure on election authorities to the co-conspirators’ lies and intimidation targeting the ballot counters Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss, who goes by Shaye. This also includes efforts in Washington that impacted Georgia, such as the D.O.J. lawyer Jeffrey Clark’s preparation of an allegedly fraudulent draft letter targeting the state.

The second scheme was the organization of electors falsely proclaiming that Mr. Trump was the winner in Georgia. Here Ms. Willis alleges that Mr. Trump personally participated in this effort — for example, he called the Republican National Committee with Mr. Eastman from the White House to organize the fake slates of electors, including in Georgia. And she charges a great deal of other activity in and outside of Georgia.

The third scheme was the allegedly unlawful accessing of voting machines in Coffee County, a rural county southeast of Atlanta. The indictment asserts that, following a White House conversation about getting access to actual election machines to prove supposed vote theft, Sidney Powell, a lawyer tied to Mr. Trump, along with Trump campaign allies and computer consultants conspired to illegally access voting equipment in Coffee County. …

… The fourth and final scheme is what has become a trademark allegation against Mr. Trump and his circle — obstruction and cover-up. Ms. Willis alleges that members of the conspiracy filed false documents, made false statements to government investigators and committed perjury during the Fulton County judicial proceedings.

In addition to the RICO charges, every one of the 19 defendants is charged with at least one, and in many cases multiple, other offenses. Perhaps most telling among these is Ms. Willis indicting Mr. Trump and six others with felony solicitation of violation of oath by public officer. This fits Mr. Trump’s demand for those 11,780 votes like a glove.

I’m hearing that D.A. Willis wants to go to trial in six months, but there is much skepticism it will happen before the election. We’ll see.

Update: By popular demand …

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have long articles detailing what we know about Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. Both are worth reading; no paywalls. The New York Times says that about 20 people have been informed they could face indictments in Fulton County.

Axios is reporting that it’s very possible the Georgia trial would be televised. “Georgia law requires that cameras be allowed during judicial proceedings with a judge’s approval. Cameras are seen as an important aspect of transparency,” it says. A judge would need a compelling reason to bar cameras.

Axios is also reporting that Trump is doing public witness tampering.

Former President Trump on Monday appeared to warn former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan against testifying before the Fulton County grand jury in the state’s 2020 election probe.

Driving the news: “I am reading reports that failed former Lt. Governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, will be testifying before the Fulton County Grand Jury,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account on Monday.

“He shouldn’t. I barely know him but he was, right from the beginning of this Witch Hunt, a nasty disaster for those looking into the Election Fraud that took place in Georgia.”

Duncan, who criticized Trump’s false election fraud claims in 2020, said Saturday that he had been told to appear Tuesday before the Fulton County grand jury.

In other indictment news: David Kurtz at TPM reports that Trump spent the weekend blasting nasty social media posts at Judge Chutkan, who is overseeing his federal J6 trial. See also Trump jabs at judge in election case, testing warning against ‘inflammatory’ statements at Politico.

Trump’s maybe trying to goad her into doing something to get her removed from his case, or he’s trying to intimidate her, or he’s trying to get her assassinated. Whatever.

Kurtz’s analysis is very much worth reading. I’ll just quote a little bit —

I don’t expect dramatic action from Chutkan immediately for reasons that mostly make sense in this particular moment: she might not want to escalate this fight too quickly but rather leave herself room to ramp up down the road when it might really be needed, she doesn’t want to get bogged down in First Amendment fights over a gag order, she doesn’t want to feed Trump’s narrative of this all being a personal attack on him. … But I suspect she and Trump are on a collision course that can’t be avoided indefinitely.

Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis has announced she will begin to present her election fraud case to a grand jury this week. And she is expected to present a RICO case that will involve several “perps.” Here and there I’ve seen some grumbling that Willis should simplify her case and just aim at Trump, but I disagree. We’ve got Jack Smith doing that already, and Willis is a county-level prosecutor whose first responsibility is to bring Georgia criminals to justice. And, anyway, I wouldn’t presume to second-guess Willis. She seems to know what she is doing.

CNN reports —

Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Donald Trump’s legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County, sources tell CNN.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to seek charges against more than a dozen individuals when her team presents its case before a grand jury next week. Several individuals involved in the voting systems breach in Coffee County are among those who may face charges in the sprawling criminal probe.

Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected the breach was not an organic effort sprung from sympathetic Trump supporters in rural and heavily Republican Coffee County – a county Trump won by nearly 70% of the vote. They have gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software, according to people familiar with the situation.

Trump allies attempted to access voting systems after the 2020 election as part of the broader push to produce evidence that could back up the former president’s baseless claims of widespread fraud.

In other words, Trump’s people were trying to get their hands on voting machines from everywhere in Georgia, but they were only able to do so in hyper-MAGA Coffee County. One suspects similar efforts were made in other states. Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell are mentioned in the article and may have been involved. Sidney Powell is expected to be the next recipient of a Jack Smith indictment, btw.

In other news: Watch: Far-right activist Ammon Bundy arrested at high school football fundraiser. Heh.

Worth reading: David French, The Lost Boys of the American Right. No paywall.

We have a report from the Washington Post on this morning’s hearing on the protective order. No paywall.

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan said a number of interesting things in the hearing. For example, the “existence of a political campaign” will not have a bearing on her decisions. Trump’s running for president should not interfere with the “orderly administration of justice.” His campaign schedule will have to work around the trial schedule, not the other way around.

Also, she said that while Trump does have a right to freedom of speech, that right is not absolute,

The judge did warn that despite the limits of the protective order, all of Trump’s behavior and statements are covered by his conditions of release. So regardless of whether his statements are made from disclosures derived from discovery or not, if they have the affect of interfering with the administration of justice or intimidating or harassing witnesses, the judge will be “scrutinizing them very carefully.”

I’ll add to this post if I hear anything more.

Update: Politico says,

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan warned Donald Trump and his attorney Friday that repeated “inflammatory” statements about his latest criminal prosecution would force her to speed his trial on charges related to his bid to subvert the 2020 election.

“I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements about this case,” Chutkan told Trump lawyer John Lauro during a hearing. “I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.”

Did you hear that, Trump?

Update: Here is the judge’s protective order. Look especially at item 10, about restrictions being put on Trump when he’s viewing Sensitive Materials.

I’ll let Lawrence O’Donnell ramble a bit.

Trump is doing his best to stir up violence against anyone involved in prosecuting him. It appears the man shot by FBI agents in Utah yesterday had been motivated by Trump to make the threats that caught the agency’s attention. There is a growing consensus that we’re unlikely to see another January 6 style mass mob, but there is increasing likelihood of lone wolf terrorists, snipers, assassins. “We are witnessing Trump telling America that if he doesn’t get his way — regardless of democratic norms like elections or the rule of law — then you will get violence,” it says here.

Judge Tanya Chutkan needs beefed-up security. So much muck has been thrown at Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis that she has told her staff to be careful and not respond to any of it.  See the actual ad Trump’s campaign is running against the prosecutors working to bring him to justice.

Any other defendant would have been slammed by the courts for this behavior. He’d be in jail already. But everyone is afraid to penalize Trump. This is why he is so dangerous. His threats and cult following have given him power. And you know he’s not going to follow whatever protective order Judge Chutkan issues. They’re saying that if he starts publicly intimidating witnesses, that would be a separate crime. He could be charged. Charging him just seems to encourage him.

Jack Smith today proposed a start date of January 2 for the J5 trial. The filing document begins:

In its August 3, 2023, Minute Order, the Court directed the Government to “file a brief proposing a trial date and providing an estimate of the time required to set forth the prosecution’s case in chief” at trial. The Government proposes that trial begin on January 2, 2024, and estimates that its case in chief will take no longer than four to six weeks. This trial date, and the proposed schedule outlined below, would give the defendant time to review the discovery in this case and prepare a defense, and would allow the Court and parties to fully litigate any pre-trial legal issues. Most importantly, a January 2 trial date would vindicate the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial—an interest guaranteed by the Constitution and federal law in all cases, but of particular significance here, where the defendant, a former president, is charged with conspiring
to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, obstruct the certification of the election results, and discount citizens’ legitimate votes.

Go to page 3 and begin reading at “The Constitution and Federal Law Provide that a Speedy Trial is in the Public’s Interest and in the Interests of Justice,” where it’s argued that the public needs a speedy trial in this matter.

In Other News: Clarence Thomas has taken undisclosed benefits from every right-leaning rich guy in the Western Hemisphere. This is a scale of corruption unprecedented in U.S. federal court history, I understand. If he’s still on the bench next time the Dems control both houses of Congress, they really need to impeach and remove him.I

In More Other News: The wildfires in Hawaii are so terribly tragic. I have nothing to say except that it’s such a damn shame.