riding the echo down

Posted by Marcie Jones

https://www.wonkette.com/p/january-6-where-are-they-now

Can you believe it’s been five years since more than 2,000 people stormed the Capitol? And that Donald John Trump not only escaped all consequences, but went on to be awarded the highest office in the land? We still can’t wrap our heads around it, and surely never will. Rioters put up a gallows for Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence, and were looking for him so they could use it, while Trump Tweeted that he had it coming! They smeared poop on the walls! And, of course, it was a premeditated plot long before that day, what with that whole fake electors scheme, and Steve Bannon announcing on his show the day before that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”

We will never understand how January 6 was not the end of Trump’s existence outside of prison for the rest of his life, much less his political career. But we never understood how mocking a disabled reporter, the pussgrab tape, the six bankruptcies, stanning for Russia, the more than 25 women who accused him of being a sex pest, or screaming that Hillary Clinton should be LOCKED UP were each not the end of his political career either! But, The Groceries, we guess. And that Harris lady liked to laugh.

Since January 6, and Trump’s pardon or sentence commutation of 1,570 rioters, at least 33 people charged went on to re-offend, and some of their crimes are hair-raising. Like plotting the murder of FBI agents in retaliation for investigating the case. There’s also violent assault, like Alan St. Onge, who allegedly punched a woman in the throat, then kicked a man and stomped on a man’s chest at an Asheville bar after the woman rejected his advances. Three of the pardonees were arrested for rape, and six were charged with child-sex crimes, including child rape and/or possession of child pornography.

Other charges racked up by rioters since their pardons or commutations include reckless DUI homicide, regular DUIs, drugs, firearm and other weapons charges, and stealing copper wire, and one Daryl Johnson admitted to secretly recording women undressing in a tanning salon. And Trump even pardoned one of the January 6 defendants for a second time, one Dan Wilson, who first was pardoned after he pleaded guilty to impeding or injuring an officer, and then again over weapons charges related to the illegal arsenal police found in his Kentucky home when they came to arrest him in 2023 for the first charges.

And there’s more! Notes CREW:

Christopher Moynihan was charged with a felony for threatening to murder House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in October. John Andries was convicted in June for violating a peace order by following the mother of his child in violation of a court order. Brent Holdridge and Zachary Alam were charged in May with burglary and breaking and entering, respectively.

And one defendant was also killed by police during a traffic stop in Indiana, allegedly after an armed altercation with police. Because no shit, just like daddy, these people never had any respect for the law to begin with; more than 22 percent of them already had criminal records before January 6.

But, as Pete Hegseth’s former work husband Will Cain said on Fox News, the only law now is the law of the jungle. RIP civilization! There is no law in Trumplandia other than what Dictator Day One decrees it is.

And Republicans have been coming to where they are — the full embrace of a white-supremacist dictatorship — from the get-go. The common thread is a belief that white men can and should just go out and take whatever they want, like a bunch of Cliven Bundys. Maybe that’s why they like Putin so much! He’s just getting his bag. Or as Stephen Miller put it to Jake Tapper on CNN, referring to Venezuela:

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Sounds like the last thing you hear from a mugger who dropped out of Sarah Lawrence, right before he runs off with your wallet.

Never forget how fucking sick it all was. Never forget it was Trump’s plan all along. John Eastman even admitted it on national television! (He’s disbarred now.)

And Steve Bannon said so right out loud.

“That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner. Here’s the thing. After then, Trump never has to go to a voter again […] He’s gonna say ‘Fuck you. How about that?’ Because […] he’s done his last election.”

Roger Stone too, right in front of a Danish film crew: “the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine tenths of the law, no, we won.”

Those two managed to weasel out of consequences for whatever their parts in the planning also, though Bannon served four months in prison for contempt of Congress over refusing to testify. And Stone was sentenced to 40 months, but for lying to the Mueller investigation, after being convicted of felonies that included witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, and making false statements, though Trump commuted his sentence right before Stone was set to report to serve, and later pardoned him and Bannon too, for whatever.

Never forget how when rioters broke into the Capitol (and no, police did not “let them in,” one Michael Sparks of Kentucky smashed a window, and it is all on tape) Trump repeatedly ignored lawmakers’ pleas for help. And when Trump was informed of the violence and that they were trying to hang Mike Pence, he sipped a Diet Coke and Tweeted out that Pence had it coming.

Five years ago-ish, even fellow Republicans thought the failed coup spelled the end for Trump. Karoline Leavitt called Pence a “hero” then deleted her Tweet; Elise Stefanik condemned the violence and called January 6 a tragic day, then pretended like she never said that and went full election-denial crazy. Ted Cruz called it a “violent terrorist attack,” then later claimed he “misspoke.” Nancy Mace called the violence “heartbreaking” and lamented the day after, “everything that he’s worked for ... all of that — his entire legacy — was wiped out yesterday.”

But after Trump failed to be impeached for a second time, all of them got back on board, and the narrative changed, to ANTIFA and FBI plants did it, then “peaceful tourists,” and finally to Trump’s full embrace of his January 6 mob as his literal chorus, who were just there for a “day of love.”

But peaceful tourists they were not. And in case you forgot that, here is a thread of clips to get re-traumatized by.

At least 174 Capitol police officers were injured, seven people died, and about $2.7 billion in damage was done. And Mike Johnson still refuses to hang the plaque commemorating that day, even though it was mandated in a 2022 bipartisan government funding law.

What will the next five years bring in this lawless jungle? Shit, we don’t even want to think about the next five days.

But here we are, and here we shall be!

[CREW / Washington Post gift link]

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Posted by Marcie Jones

https://www.wonkette.com/p/most-unqualified-secretary-of-defense

How low will this administration go to rid itself of political enemies or anyone threatening to get in the way of Trump doing whatever the fuck he wants? We are still plunging the depths in our rickety submersible! Now Secretary of Defense / former Fox News host / credibly accused sexual assailant Pete Hegseth has huffed on X that he has issued a formal letter of censure to Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, which will go on his permanent record, ooooo, and has directed Secretary of the Navy John Phelan to review his retirement rank and pay and “provide a recommendation in 45 days.” Which is better than the hanging like George Washington would that Trump called for, at least. Or the court martial Hegseth was calling for earlier last year. Guess even the military lawyers who told him that it’s okay to kill civilian boat-bomb survivors explained that would never fly.

What Hegseth is angrily hooting his whiskey breath about is how Kelly — man who knows of what he speaks, combat pilot of four missions, astronaut, and hero who nursed his wife Gabby Giffords back to health after she got shot in the fucking brain by a conspiracy-theorist lunatic — has been unabashedly stating the truth: that the Uniform Code of Military Justice says members of the military have a duty and obligation to not follow illegal orders, not even from Sleepy Hitler. And Hegseth calls that “seditious statements.” Unlike when Lord and Savior Donald Trump tried to overthrow the 2020 election by lying about fraud that he knew did not exist! That was just, like, him stating his opinion and doing free speech, man.

And SecDef Duffman, Trump, and little Nazi bitch Stephen Miller have been furious at Kelly in particular since November, when Kelly, along with Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin plus Reps. Maggie Goodlander, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, and Chrissy Houlahan, recorded a PSA directed at members of the military and intelligence communities to that effect. Watch it again and again, it is better than Cats!

Hegseth’s histrionics (and all the war crimes, and how he fired all of the military lawyers right away) only go to show how much that message is needed!

War crimes sure is a sensitive spot for Hegseth. And military men with many times more experience and higher rank than Hegseth ever rose to all know what the law is. Such as also former Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Mark Milley, who infuriated Trump during his first term by not agreeing to tell the Army to go shoot protestors in DC in the legs from a helicopter, and told Stephen Miller to “shut the fuck up” for good measure. Last January Hegseth stripped Milley of his security detail, and ordered the acting inspector general to investigate whether the former Army leader could face criminal charges or a retroactive demotion, though nothing seems to have happened with that yet.

And what has been going on with Hegseth’s boat bombings sure sounds like just plain old murder. For starters, the US has not been, and officially is still not, at declared war with Venezuela. Ask Marco Rubio, it’s “law enforcement.”

And while Hegseth and Trump have been making nonsensical claims that the now 115 victims of boat bombings were smuggling drugs to the US, and that is exactly the same as engaging in “hostilities” like firing on troops would be, at the same time Hegseth was also telling Congress that he did not need to get any kind of approval from them, because US troops were never in harm’s way from these people in the boats to begin with. Which is it?

And there’s also the order that somebody gave to finish off survivors of a boat attack while they clung helplessly to flotsam, which is such a war crime that it is even listed as a specific example in the military code of justice list of war crimes:

Shipwrecked combatants include those who have been shipwrecked from any cause…. Persons who have been incapacitated by … shipwreck are in a helpless state, and it would be dishonorable and inhumane to make them the object of attack. In order to receive protection as hors de combat, the person must be wholly disabled from fighting.

Whoever gave that order could certainly face charges one day, if Democrats ever return to power. Coward Hegseth says it wasn’t him! He just happened to be out of the room taking a 44-minute dump or something at the time, leaving Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, head of the military’s Special Operations Command, to figure out what to do by himself. Though Hegseth says he totally approved of what Bradley did once he found out about it, you betcha. Can we see the tape to judge for ourselves? HELL NO!

Anyway, Kelly has not backed down since November.

And he is not backing down now, either.

Nor has he quit calling Trump BONE SPURS.

In November, whiskeydick Hegseth was raging that Kelly should get a COURT MARTIAL, that didn’t happen, so he’s now resorting to other measures to try to discredit the guy. He desperately does not want other members of the military, retired or otherwise, free-speeching anything that might make troops think twice about participating in the Donroe Doctrine for Dominating the Hemisdere, be it bombing people in boats, or killing 80 civilians in Venezuela. Because ideas like that might spread, and then the whole plan would come crashing down. Wouldn’t that be a shame.

[The Independent]

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Posted by Marcie Jones

https://www.wonkette.com/p/hope-you-didnt-forget-those-epstein

With all of this chaotic remaking of the new world order going on, did everybody forget about those Epstein files? Now that topic seems almost as refreshing as a lemony sorbet (with a pube in it).

Back on November 17, a discharge petition and the resulting vote passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act to compel the release of the files — which President Donald John Trump himself signed off on, after it was clear any veto of his would be overridden anyway — gave the Department of Justice 30 days to release them. That did not happen, though 100,000 files were dumped in a context-free stew on the DOJ website. Some appear legitimate, like court documents from civil lawsuits. Some are obviously not, like an AI video of “Epstein killing himself” in his cell, from 4Chan. And some are who the hell knows, like two reports from witnesses who suggest that the president is an accessory to murder of an infant and an underage victim, respectively.

And anyway then Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi had until last Saturday, January 3, to explain to Congress any redactions or withheld documents. But that didn’t happen either. And now Deputy AG/Trump’s former(?) personal lawyer Todd Blanche is whining that there are simply too many Epstein files, 5.2 million documents, for them to get released. CBS says the DOJ has gone through less than one percent of the files. Funny, because just last July Kash Patel and Dan Bongino went on Fox blinking like hostages to say there were NO Epstein files, no clients, Epstein didn’t kill himself, nothing to see here! And now there are too many, like Strega Nona’s magic pasta bowl! Very credible.

Dumbshit Todd Blanche now claims that there are more than 400 attorneys from the Justice Department in Washington, the FBI, the Southern District of Florida, and the Southern District of New York all working “around the clock” to try to sort through the files, to “protect victims,” and there still will not be any more released until January 20 or 21. And yet the DOJ still somehow managed to bungle and release documents with victims’ names unredacted anyway, and with people redacted who should not have been, like the Andrew formerly known as prince, and photos with Trump himself. And the DOJ is also withholding other stuff for no apparent or explained reason, like financial records, and grand jury minutes that a federal judge had already approved for release at the DOJ’s own request.

Eight of Epstein’s victims are now calling for the impeachment of Trump, Bondi, and Patel over the non-release, though of course there are not votes for that (yet). And 18 furious survivors have also signed an open letter calling for Congress to have open hearings, and blasting the DOJ for having no communications with victims at all.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also wants the Senate to initiate legal action over the DOJ’s lawbreaking cover-upping, and Dick Durbin is investigating. Reps. Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Judiciary Committee, respectively, have also said they are “examining all legal options.” But who the fuck will stop us is this administration’s motto all day long!

Meanwhile, on December 24, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined 11 Democrats signing a letter urging Acting Inspector General Don Berthiaume to audit the Justice Department’s compliance. And Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie said they are “intervening” with the Southern District of New York and asking the court to appoint a “special master” to ensure all of the documents are released.

Holy shit, what is in there that is so bad? And how is it even possible that one person could generate so much documentation in a lifetime? At this point, it is fair to speculate wildly, and assume the worst!

Or another option might be to listen to the more than one thousand survivors and believe them, like Maria Farmer, who reported Epstein and Trump for creepy behavior to the FBI twice, in 1996 and 2006, and was ignored. Or Sports Illustrated model Stacey Williams, who “has described how Mr. Trump groped her in 1993 at Trump Tower while Mr. Epstein — whom she was then dating — watched,” and described the pair’s activities as “trophy hunting,” with herself being the trophy. Or listen to Trump, who has always wished Ghislaine Maxwell well and never said a single word of support for Epstein’s victims.

Or, a functioning Department of Justice could more closely examine the many names that have come out since then. Ghislaine Maxwell offered up a few to Blanche, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who does not even deny hanging out with the guy (and sure is nonstop obsessed with children’s genitals and teenagers’ sperm). But this is Trump’s America, justice is now the Pammy Jo and Todd Show. And those two could not make it any clearer that no such further investigation will be happening. Except of any Democrats, of course.

But here’s a bit that seems glossed over that is worth talking about: more emerging evidence of Epstein’s close ties to tech bros, like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Sergey Brin of Google, and others. Being mentioned of course does not mean that any of these people partook in the activities on offer at Kid Rape Island or any other Epstein venues. But there’s no doubt these guys sure as shit kept in contact with Epstein for many years after his 2008 conviction.

Remember Jes Staley, Epstein’s personal banker who visited pedo island on his 90-foot boat, and the New Mexico Zorro ranch that Epstein hoped to turn into some kind of breeding farm for his superior genes, Elon Musk-ily? Files reveal that not only did Staley know about Epstein’s conviction, he even visited Epstein while Epstein was serving his sentence! And it was a profitable visit. Epstein referred many of his friends to Staley, who then brought them into JP Morgan as clients, including Brin, Musk, and Nathan Myhrvold and Bill Gates of Microsoft. And, in a deposition in the US Virgin Islands’ lawsuit against JP Morgan, Staley also helpfully provided a list of people Epstein had introduced or referred to him as a potential client.

And in Ghislaine Maxwell’s deposition to Todd Blanche last year, she noted that she met Elon Musk at a three-to-four-day party for Google co-founder Sergey Brin around 2010 or ‘11, on the island of somebody with the Dickensian (or H.G. Wellsian) name of Dr. Pigozzi, who’s revealed in other context clues to be Dr. Jean Pigozzi, an Italian businessman. Pigozzi was also photographed in 2011 at a tech dinner with Epstein, along with tedious hack/New York Times columnist David Brooks, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Craig Mundie, Google software engineer Lori Park, and Marissa Mayer, who went on to serve as CEO of Yahoo from 2012 to 2017.

And messages from X show that in March of 2024, one Cassandra Sorrentino was messaging Musk to sign a “Standard Epstein and FTCA [Federal Tort Claims Act] retainer JPA [Joint Provisional Agreement]” on behalf the Marsh Law firm, which also represents survivors, including Annie and Maria Farmer. Why would Musk want to retain said firm himself? And in 2023 Musk was also subpoenaed in US Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase & Co.

And Epstein had bragged that he had advised Musk after his shitposting on Twitter/X had sent Tesla shares plummeting in 2022. Also Epstein’s calendar showed that Elon was planning to visit his island December 6, 2014, though it’s unknown if that visit ever happened, and Musk says it didn’t. Though in 2019 he did admit to visiting Epstein’s house “years ago” with Talulah Riley, which would mean some time after 2008, when they met. And it is still not proven or disproven yet whether a message that had been circulating online about Epstein asking Musk if he and Ghislaine met up for Kung Fu practice is real. (Musk denies accepting any financial advice from Epstein, and indeed he might not have! Epstein got his start as a confidence-man scammer, and was well known to claim to be a close advisor to people he actually barely even knew.)

FLASHBACK:

Still, kind of funny that those two were much closer than Musk ever let on, especially after Musk flooded his hellsite with about 35 posts on Trump being in the Epstein files and doing a coverup after their messy breakup in July, as if it had somehow escaped Musk’s notice until then that Trump and Epstein were best friends for more than a decade. A sample:

Though Trump and Musk have since reconciled, and Musk was at Mar-a-Lago for New Year’s. Trigger warning, Lara Trump singing:

Hope he took that kid off his shoulders before he got into another fistfight with a member of Trump’s Cabinet!

And then in a strange coincidence, over the weekend Grok, X’s chatbot, started letting users alter images with its AI, which they quickly employed to produce Child Sexual Abuse Material and other assorted deepfake nudies. France is investigating.

And there’s Peter Thiel. In between investigating the antichrist and being JD Vance’s sugardaddy and funding his political rise, he and Epstein were quite close. In 2015 and 2016, as in seven years after Epstein’s first arrest, Epstein put $40 million into a fund Thiel co-owns, Valar Ventures, which is worth more than $170 million today. And in 2014 Epstein wrote to Thiel, “that was fun, see you in 3 weeks!” And in 2018, Epstein was urging Thiel, “Dec visit me Caribbean.” Thiel says that he never visited the island.

There’s Bill Gates, who Staley also claims Epstein introduced him to. Epstein appeared to attempt to extort Gates in 2017 into donating to a charitable fund that Epstein was setting up at JPMorgan (and that Epstein would get a cut of), by threatening to reveal an affair Gates allegedly had in his late 50s with a very young looking 20-something Russian bridge player. Gates didn’t do it, though, and days before he died, Epstein changed his will to make Gates’s advisor Boris Nikolic a backup executor, which Nikolic says was a final “fuck you” retaliatory move at Gates that neither he nor Gates knew anything about beforehand.

There’s Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and donor to Democrats, who admitted to visiting Pedo Island to do fundraising for MIT, though he claims nothing untoward happened, and he has been pushing for full transparency. Hoffman has had to hire extra security, he says, after Elon Musk falsely claimed he was an Epstein client. That blame-the-Democrats also happens to be exactly what Epstein predicted to Steve Bannon Trump would do about the E. Jean Carroll case: “Trump’s move now, Epstein theorized, would be to deflect from this story by reviving the rape charges against Bill Clinton.”

Are there any tech guys who didn’t have some kind of connection to Epstein after his arrest? Guess when raising money is one’s job, it pays to not Google one’s dinner companions, even when you are Google, and to turn a blind eye to any potential funders flying around everywhere with a group of emotional-support girl-children.

Epstein, of course, made his fortune as a confidence-man scammer by implying he was more connected than he actually was, until he actually was well-connected. He leveraged tenuous connections into real ones that involved rich people like Leon Black and L Brands CEO Les Wexner giving him billions of their dollars to play with, even though Epstein never graduated college and only had five years of experience as a trader at Bear Stearns. And vice-versa, Epstein invested millions of his own with acquaintances like his ex-girlfriend’s husband Glenn Dubin (who has been named by victims and witnesses as a perpetrator, though has never been charged with any crime), Thiel, and hedge fund manager Daniel Zwirn’s D.B. Zwirn Special Opportunities Fund.

What other wonderful secrets did these ageless enigmas share? We will surely never know if Team Pedo Coverup has their way! But it is mighty weird and notable how so many of these men remain close to Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party to this day. Sure makes you wonder if the files-coverup going on right in front of everybody’s face is only about Trump, or if there are other associates who Trump might have made quid pro quos with to protect, in exchange for donating to his inauguration fund, or buying some TrumpCoins, or whatever.

Though none of it yet explains why the New York Times literally covered up evidence of Trump’s ties to Epstein, even as Epstein was sending them salacious details. Still no “Sulzberger” in the files yet!

It’s a big cabal, and one thing is for sure, the rich really are different from you or me. Not sure who the artist is in this TikTok video, but, nailed it. TL;DW: once you’ve bought everything else, what is left as a gift for the man who has everything but child sex slaves? Won’t somebody think of the needs of billionaires and the sucking vortexes where their souls ought to be?

[PBS / Daily Beast archive link / WSJ gift link / NYT gift link]

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