toucana

MSNBC legal commentator Glenn Kirschner made an interesting point on this today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9vI23c0q5U Kirschner says that during his 30 year stint as a federal prosecutor in Washington DC, the attorneys office there used the Secret Service forensic science divison rather than the Metropolitan police department, or the FBI lab at Quantico, to handle any criticially important data recovery from seized computers or cell phones. Kirschner says they did so because the USSS forensic science service had a stellar reputation for handling probative searches of cell phones in particular. The idea that they somehow lost the critical text messages for just Jan 5th & 6th 2021 during a bungled device replacement process, and can’t now recover these from backups is beyond ridiculous. Small wonder that the head of the USSS James Murray abruptly resigned last week.

I posted this for additional context. I always think it is useful to know to whom remarks of this type were being addressed, and what sort of political affiliations and backgrounds are involved. You say that "nothing about this is really new" - Well I'd say that unless you are unusually well informed about the involvement of Bannon and other right-wing US political extremists with Far Eastern disinformation networks like G News, then you almost certainly don't know the full extent of the pernicious role these groups have played (and continue to play) in US politics, especially their role in pushing scientific falsehoods about COVID-19 during the pandemic. My background is in Far Eastern Studies so I tend to take an interest in the activities of individuals like Guo Wengui.

According to Mother Jones reporter Dan Friedman, Steve Bannon made these remarks shortly before the US 2020 presidential election in the HQ of G News, a right-wing disnformation network associated with an emigre Chinese billionaire called Guo Wengui (郭文贵) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09jjIi88Sa8 Guo Wengui fled China in 2017 and is currently wanted there on charges of bribery, kidnapping, money- laundering, fraud and rape. He subsequently settled in USA and became a member of Trump’s exclusive Mar-a-Lago club in Florida before setting up G News in tandem with Steve Bannon. This media outlet played a prominent role in promoting disinformation about COVID-19 during the pandemic - specifically fabricating and circulating false claims that the COVID was deliberately created by a Chinese biological warfare lab in Wuhan. He has also promoted conspiracy theories against Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and G News also actively disseminates QAnon propaganda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guo_Wengui in August 2020 Steve Bannon was arrested by FBI agents in Maine in connection with his border wall fraud scheme onboard a $28 million yacht called Lady May owned by Guo Wengui - Bannon was subsequently pardoned by Trump. In February 2022 Guo Wengui was reported to be facing a $134 million fine from a US NYSC judge for illegally hiding this same yacht in the Bahamas outside of US jurisdiction as part of a fraudulent asset concealment scheme. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/guo-wengui-bannon-judge-order-b2012475.html

The Bannon Gambit On Tuesday, the Mother Jones website released a leaked audio clip of Steve Bannon discussing Trump’s post election strategy in private with some close associates on Saturday October 31 2020. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/leaked-audio-steve-bannon-trump-2020-election-declare-victory/ The audio clip discloses what some commentators have previously called the ‘Pigeon Gambit’ in chess - a term that was originally coined by Scott D. Weitzenhoffer in 2005 to describe the problem of trying to debate evolution with creationists: "it’s like playing chess with a pigeon. It knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, then flies back to its flock to claim victory”. The chilling part of the newly released audio clip - as Bannon gleefully makes clear - is that if Donald Trump had succeeded in his plot to corruptly seize power in November 2020, then there would have been no more elections in USA - ever.

“Michael Gove went to 10 Downing St with the metaphorical bottle of whisky and a revolver, but clearly Boris Johnson has downed the whisky and turned the revolver on Michael Gove” - (Conservative MP Tim Loughton) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQiAA9JsZAA

The current tally now stands at 42 resignations from cabinet in just 24 hours - an all-comers' record. Johnson has also sacked Michael Gove the 'Levelling Up Minister' who was the first senior cabinet member to advise him to go. The full list of resignations is here: https://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-resignations-whos-staying-and-whos-going-ministers-reveal-if-they-are-backing-boris-johnson-after-rishi-sunak-and-sajid-javid-quit-12646480

The British Government is in complete chaos, and is on the brink of collapse tonight. PM Boris Johnson has been hit with 38 resignations from his cabinet staff, including the Chancellor of The Exchequer, and the Health Minister in the last 24 hours. A delegation of other cabinet colleagues including the Home Secretary and the replacement Chancellor (who was appointed only yesterday) are said to be at Downing Street tonight trying to persuade the PM to resign - which he is currently refusing to do. Attempting to explain the sequence of scandals which has led to this situation is no simple task, but this article by CNN offers a reasonable overview: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/06/uk/boris-johnson-scandals-intl/index.html One practical difficulty is that Boris Johnson survived a parliamentary No Confidence vote brought by his own Conservative party barely a month ago. Under existing Conservative party rules, they can’t bring another such motion for at least 12 months. That however is likely to be dealt with by an emergency rule change later tonight, if all else fails

Apparently a spokesman for the US Secret Service is now telling media outlets that Tony Ornato, the former WH deputy head of operations, and Bobby Engel the driver, are prepared to offer testimony disputing the latest account of what happened inside the presidential SUV on 1/6. The one big problem is that Cassidy Hutchinson was deposed under oath in a public hearing, and spoke under penalty of perjury if she lied. The Jan 6 committe and Miss Hutchinson’s lawyers have now invited these two SS agents to do likewise - Don’t hold your breath, because I don’t think either of them will be in any great hurry to do so. Tony Ornato was actually removed from the presidential protection detail within minutes of president Biden taking office in 2021, because Ornato was widely seen as a total Trump sycophant who simply could not be trusted with the responsibility of protecting his successor. Even senior Republicans distrusted him, notably VP Mike Pence who flatly refused to get into a limousine sent by Ornato to remove him from a Capitol basement parking bay in the middle of the 1/6 mayhem. “I trust you” Mike Pence told his own personal SS guard, “But you aren’t the one driving the car”. Pence seriously feared that once driven away from the Capitol, he would be placed on a plane and flown to a ‘secure location’ in Alaska. He chose to remain in the Capitol and complete the electoral count. There are credible reports that a number of members of Trump’s SS security detail were such gung-ho supporters of the MAGA movement, that they were posting messages on their personal social media accounts, cheering the insurrectionists along on their march to the Capitol - even though the SS agents, of all people - would have known from 11 a.m. onwards that there were people carrying AR-15 rifles and Glock pistols in that crowd. Attached is a clip of a panel discussion from last night that includes Carol Leonnig the Pulitzer prize award winning journalist for the WP who has also written two books about the Secret Service. They discuss these issues in some detail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h0ci208Txo

An interesting article by Jill Lepore published in the New Yorker in May 2022 makes the point that the 4,000 words of the US Constitution written in 1787 contain no references to women https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-there-are-no-women-in-the-constitution That is by no means the end of of the derelictions in the Constitution either. It doesn’t mention, black people, Jews, or people who identify as LGBT for example; nor does it have anything lucid to say about climate change, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, the internet, the expansion of the universe, the Hubble constant, the nature of dark matter, SETI - or a dozen other topics of pressing interest either. Most critical of all, the US constitution (in Ailto’s view at least) has nothing to say about a fundamental right to privacy. That at least seems to be the cornerstone of his decision to overthow 50 years of stare decisis, and to throw the USA into legislative chaos.