Because of the way Trump fucked up his January 6 pardons, there is great variation between the legal statuses of those whose convictions would (will, undoubtedly) be dissolved: Some, like Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, Joe Biggs and Ethan Nordean, are convicted seditionists adjudged to be terrorists. Others just got terrorism enhancements at sentencing for their lesser crimes; still others did not.

But the top line meaning of this intervention is that Todd Blanche and Jeanine Pirro are intervening to let adjudged terrorists like Rhodes and Biggs escape all punishment for their attacks on the country (Enrique Tarrio, whom prosecutors asked to cooperate against Trump, already got a full pardon).

And while the full dismissal may help the veterans among the group (including Biggs) access full VA benefits, the biggest impact would be restoring their right to bear arms.

Lots and lots of arms.

As the sentencing memo laid out,

after January 6, Rhodes purchased and provided thousands of dollars’ worth of firearms and related equipment for certain leaders and instructed them to prepare to distribute them to other Oath Keepers for “civil war.” See, e.g., 3/6/23PM Tr. at 5952-53 (Landon Bentley describing how Rhodes provided him a black AR-15 pistol); ECF 60 at ¶51 (Joshua James Plea Statement of Facts, stating that “At Rhodes’s instruction, James took with him multiple firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition, multiple burner phones, scopes, magazines, night-vision equipment, and other tactical gear” and that “Rhodes told James to be prepared to transport and distribute the equipment to others upon Rhodes’s instruction and to be prepared for violence in the event of a civil war.”).

As Judge Amit Mehta explained when he applied a terrorism enhancement and sentenced Rhodes to an 18-year sentence, his crime lay in taking up arms against his own country.

We can have civic disagreements about relative merits of policies. We can have discussions about who is the better leader in a particular point in time. But what we cannot have, we absolutely cannot have, is a group of citizens who, because they didn’t like the outcome of the election and because they think the law was not applied and carried out in the way they believe it should be, who are then prepared to take up arms in order to foment a revolution. That’s what you did. Those aren’t my words. Those are yours. Those are your actions. Those are the actions of your conspirators.

[snip]

For decades, Mr. Rhodes, it’s clear that you have wanted the democracy in this country to devolve into violence, and you have thought that violence is an acceptable means of accomplishing your goals, your ends, putting your views and imposing them upon others, to overcome the Democratic process. It’s reflected in your personal life based upon what your wife has said about your conduct toward her and your children. It is a pattern.

And I daresay, Mr. Rhodes — and I have never said this about anyone who I have sentenced — you, sir, present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country and to the Republic and the very fabric of our democracy.

You’re smart, you’re charismatic, you are a compelling figure, and, frankly, that’s what makes you dangerous.

Dozens of people came to Washington, D.C., because you called upon them to do so. You asked them to bring weapons. You asked them to prepare themselves for war. You asked them to take on their government.

[snip]

And the reality is, as you sit here today and based on the words that we heard you speak, the moment you are released, whenever that may be, you will be prepared to take up arms against your government, because — not because you think you’re an important person, not because you think the wrong President is in office, because you think that is an appropriate way to resolve conflict, and that is an appropriate way to have redress against the government when you think the law has not been applied the way you believe it should be.

And I’m not making this up. This is what you’ve said under oath.

This is the man that Jeanine Pirro and Todd Blanche just handed a metaphorical gun.

And every single Republican needs to own the decision to arm terrorists.

There is one minor legal point that may get interesting.

When DOJ successfully argued against LaMonica McIver’s bid to use Jan6ers as comparators in her selective prosecution bid, DOJ said it was inapt because there was no prosecutorial discretion involved in releasing those convicted of violently assaulting cops. Among the many amicus briefs submitted in her appeal is one from January 6 prosecutors, written by James Pearce and signed by at least one prosecutor who worked on Proud Boy cases, arguing that the government is favoring Jan6ers because they support Trump.

But the government is nonetheless selectively pressing forward with its Section 111 prosecution against McIver, after wholly abandoning any effort to enforce that same statute against the far more violent January 6 defendants. Such a “lopsided prosecutorial response” is impermissibly selective if it “turns on ‘unlawful favoritism,’ rather than lawful prosecutorial considerations.”

[snip]

[T]he Executive Branch’s own public statements reveal the actual (and wholly illegitimate) basis for the disparate treatment: The government favors the January 6 defendants’ partisan affiliation, and it has forgone prosecution of their crimes because the President views their conduct as aligned with his own political ends.

Before, you might have argued there was no prosecutorial discretion. Now — unless on review DOJ claims that their invocation of “the Executive Branch” in this filing came from the President — there is. Among those covered by these orders are Dominic Pezzola, was convicted of assaulting a cop.

And so with this move, the question becomes whether LaMonica McIver was a bigger threat by showing up to conduct legal oversight of an ICE facility in her district than the guy, Pezzola, who first broke into the Capitol in an effort to overturn democracy.

Republicans, thus far, have avoided paying any prices for their coddling of cop assailants and terrorists. This decision has to change that.

The post Todd Blanche and Jeanine Pirro Clear Proud Boy and Oath Keeper Terrorists to Rearm appeared first on emptywheel.

The infinitesimal discussion of the immorality of the actions of the Trump  Regime  is astonishing. The Regime is threatening to wipe out whole civilizations; and murdering people in the oceans, in Venezuela, in Iran, and our own country. Apart from a few Blue Sky posts, the only objections I’ve seen are to the legality of their actions.

What happened to discourse about morality?

I don’t think morality was ever the determining factor in geopolitical calculations, but I do think there was a concerted effort among theologians, philosophers, and others to think about the morality of the use of force, under the general rubric of Just War Theory. I think international law, including the Geneva Conventions, and even the Nuremberg Trials, are efforts to put into practice a basic morality. I also think legislation to control the use of force by the president permits and perhaps even requires, moral considerations.

I remember long discussions in the dorms at Notre Dame over the moral justifications offered for the Viet Nam War, oriented to Catholic doctrine springing from St. Augustine and continuing for centuries. It didn’t stop the war, though it might have been a factor in the eventual end.  But it strengthened a number of us to object or refuse to participate, and maybe that was all that could be expected. Now, half a century later I’m not seeing that, if it’s happening at all.

Why not? There are many reasons, so many that you have to classify them just to write a list. One class has to do with the way religion operates today. In the Viet Nam Era there were no Evangelicals explaining that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were God’s chosen instruments. There were, however, clergy of all faiths and denominations attacking the war on moral grounds and a significant number defending the morality of the war on various grounds.

Just War theory isn’t just about religion, though. Killing people is bad. The question of justifications for killing is a deeply philosophical question. We utterly lack the vocabulary to consider it, and no longer engage in serious philosophical talk among ourselves or in public. I think that helps explain why aall the discussion is about legality and the impact on the all-important economy.

Background

The attacks on our government by the Trump Regime have a faint silvery lining: we are forced back to basics to justify the system. Why do we have a Constitution with limited powers divided among three branches of government? Why do we have alliances? Why do we put so much emphasis on the rule of law? What is the purpose of society? What is the proper role of government?

The exercise is bracing. It reminds us of our ideals. It shows us the wisdom of the founders and the second founders. It makes us aware of the parts of their project that failed. It reminds us to consider our history carefully. It asks us to think about what we might do better.

Where to start?

Morality is a huge subject. When we in the West began considering it, it was easy to find a starting place. As far back as we have records, people have lived under a combination of religion and the state. The two were closely connected. The monarch was bound by the rules laid out by the state religion, and the religious leaders were happy to accept the protection, allegiance, and largesse of the monarch.

That began to change, first with the Reforation, and then with the Enlightenment. (This post has an extended quote from Immanuel Kant on the nature of Enlightenment.) The Enlightenment led to hostile questioning of the role of the Church/State, and the sacred texts as anchor points. The problem became replacing them. Early efforts by philosophers like Kant and Hegel gave us moral systems that didn’t depend on the existence of the Almighty or the absolute authority of sacred texts or of the monarch. These solutions are still studied and discussed, but I do not see solid anchor points in them, which is probably on me.

I can think of several possible anchor points. We could pick a book or a theory or a religion, and stick to it. We could study it and use it as a starting point, or even as an absolute.

We could start with ourselves. We have a sense of morality from our parents (I mean, of course, decent people). It comes from our families, our friends, our education, our churches, and our involvement in communities. We can expand our own sense of morality by reading and thinking, by discussion with others, and by close attention to outcomes of situations in which morality in a relevant consideration. In this way we can draw closer to a more universal sense of morality. We can consider other codes of morality against our own to see which seems more likely to produce results we deem moral.

In each of these efforts, we can see an anchor point: directly or indirectly: they point to other people, ranging from individuals like Aquinas and Kant, to small groups, family or clan, or larger groups, the nation and humankind as a whole. That, I think, is the main principle in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity.  This makes sense because morality consists in principles of interaction with others.

When we try to evaluate our morality we can measure it against its relation to our views of human life. We might say, for example, that we want our fellow humans to flourish, a view going pack at least to Aristotle. Or, we might say that the goal is to help our fellow humans save their immortal souls.

Morality, Religion, and Law

These are not the same thing. Religion is one way to define morality. Law is intended in part to reflect a universal morality in a particular group. As a first approximation, morality is our understanding of right and wrong. They serve different purposes. At least that’s what I think now.

Next Steps

I’m going to start by trying to define morality. The text will be The Definition of Morality from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, updated in January 2025. Then I’ll turn to a recent text. I’m thinking about Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition
by Alasdair MacIntyre.

I think part of our problem may be that the right-wing claims a monopoly on morality, and that many of us  have reacted by focusing on legality at the expense of right and wrong. We might start by poionting out that the US and international laws about war are grounded in a shared morality.

Featured image: By Jheald – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,

The post Introduction And Index To Series On Morality appeared first on emptywheel.

It was an insane, it was criminal, it was treated as an outrage.

It was about five outrages ago.

In the wake of Trump’s genocidal comment, a number of things could have happened. Cabinet members could have discussed invoking the 25th Amendment or resigning, as a number did after Trump attempted a coup in 2021. Democrats could have immediately filed for impeachment, as they’ve done twice before. Protestors could have taken to the streets, as they’ve done during past wars.

Aside from a few small protests, none of that happened.

In the interminable week that followed, a lot of the people who didn’t protest complained that Democrats are still just mulling what to do.

On one hand, the minority Democrats are well aware that they have virtually no power to boot Trump from office — an effort that’s opposed by even some in their own party — and they don’t want to distract from the issues of rising costs and inflation, where they see Republicans as most vulnerable heading into the midterms.

On the other hand, Trump’s threat to use the military to attack civilian infrastructure and destroy “a whole civilization” has infuriated base progressives, who say the president crossed a line that demands his removal, either through impeachment or the 25th Amendment. Liberals in the Capitol are advancing the cause.

The uproar is posing a dilemma for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who find themselves (once again) scrambling to prove to base voters that they’re fighting their best fight to restrain Trump’s impulses — without antagonizing the centrists whose support will be crucial to the Democrats’ success in November’s elections.

By end of week, dozens of Democrats came back from recess to discuss the various legal means for which Democrats don’t have the votes, with a plan to develop a commission to discuss those measures that won’t work legally.

U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland told fellow House Democrats on Friday that he will introduce legislation creating a commission to facilitate the ​removal of any president deemed unable to carry out their duties, according ‌to a House Judiciary Committee spokeswoman.

A “Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of the Office” bill was first introduced by Raskin, now the senior Democrat on the committee, in ​2020, when Donald Trump was in his first presidential term.

Senators, on the other hand, are pretty unhappy their House colleagues would even entertain using a process that failed twice already.

“I think the focus needs to be that Donald Trump betrayed the country. He lied to the country that he would stay out of foreign wars,” Van Hollen added.

Sen. Cory Booker, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, also shot down the House effort, saying removing Trump by way of the 25th Amendment is “not going to happen.”

“I understand because the things he’s saying seem absolutely insane, frankly,” Booker said. “What he’s doing is cruel. What he’s doing is chaotic. He’s tanking our national economy and driving pain into the lives of tens of millions of Americans.”

Another potential White House contender, Sen. Mark Kelly, expressed skepticism about the prospect of another impeachment effort after two failed attempts by Democrats during Trump’s first term — once in 2019 regarding Ukraine and then in 2021 related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“Congress went down the impeachment path with him a couple of times,” Kelly told NOTUS. “Unless you have Republican senators saying, ‘Hey, this is the appropriate thing to do,’ it’s like, it just becomes an exercise in futility.”

House Republicans, meanwhile, have decided they don’t need to tell the public how badly Trump’s illegal war is going until May 19.

Republicans in Congress have scrapped an opportunity to publicly question senior Pentagon officials next week on the war in Iran, postponing a scheduled hearing until late May as they continue to resist exercising oversight of the far-reaching military operation.

The House Armed Services Committee had scheduled testimony by Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson, leader of the military’s Africa Command, on April 21.

But majority Republicans put off the session until May 19. And it was not certain whether a Senate panel scheduled to hear from the same officials on April 23 would go forward with that hearing either.

The senior Democrat on the House committee, who said the delay was based on Admiral Cooper’s availability and his being “busy with the war,” criticized the move, arguing that it would deprive lawmakers of a crucial chance to get answers about the conflict.

“Congressional oversight is crucially important,” said Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. “We are six weeks into this conflict. And we still haven’t gotten a public briefing from anyone in the administration about the war.”

At the risk of overstepping my privilege sitting safely in Ireland (where blockades in the last week — at gas ports instead of Doonbeg — have created huge delays, real shortages at petrol stations, and a crisis for the centrist government), in my opinion Democrats are thinking of this all wrong.

Before I explain why, let me review my rubric for ways to fight fascism.

1. Fighting in the courts.
2. The Erica Chenoweth rule, which says that if you can get 3.5% of a population in the streets, it often leads to regime change.
3. Beginning to peel off four people in the Senate or eight or nine people in the House.
4. Rescuing Republicans from a predictable catastrophe like Democrats did in 2008 and 2020.
5. Waiting until 2026, winning at least one house of Congress, and beginning to rein in Trump that way.

One reason I keep harping on this rubric is to emphasize that there are different roles to play, and the tactics of those roles vary dramatically.

With very limited exceptions, members of Congress don’t have standing to sue (though the suit headlined by Joe Neguse has been instrumental in forcing open ICE prison camps for oversight), but states — especially Oregon, the headline state behind one set of tariff challenges — have done great work with lawsuits.

It never made sense to expect Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to lead protests, in part because you want to harness the energy of the far left and antifa and recruit independents and Republicans. None of those people are going to respond enthusiastically to Schumer and Jeffries. Just as importantly, No Kings thrives by eschewing message discipline. No Kings has succeeded by allowing everyone to focus on their own pet complaint, and those pet complaints have evolved over time.

Congress does need message discipline, and message discipline on something everyone will buy into. Not only do Democrats, in this media environment, have to work, really hard, for their message discipline to have any effect at all. More importantly, the three things Schumer and Jeffries do have direct influence over — peeling people off, rescuing Republicans from catastrophe, and winning in November (Jeffries has had a significant role in the response to Trump’s redistricting push, and Schumer pushed to get people like Sherrod Brown and Mary Peltola and, less laudably, Janet Mills in the Senate race, the former of which have officially put the Senate within reach) — require different tactics. Any parliamentary maneuvers (or efforts at message discipline) require accounting for people like Henry Cuellar, Tom Suozzi, Jeanne Shaheen, and John Fetterman, but they also require preserving enough comity to maximize the impact of peeling off individual Republicans (and Shaheen’s at-times infuriating squishiness has laid the groundwork for other bipartisan efforts). By far the most successful parliamentary maneuvers — and I believe it will be historically important — involved Jeffries enabling efforts to force the release of the Epstein files, which relied on a growing trust between Ro Khanna and Tom Massie. Khanna and Massie are now working hard to get just enough votes to force a War Powers Resolution. In the Senate, Republicans like John Curtis and Lisa Murkowski have pushed for some legal coverage for this war. Democrats in Congress have invested far too much faith that their colleagues would act based on courage or principle.

Which is why it’s time to make them act on self-preservation.

When I initially conceived of what is bullet 4 above, rescuing Republicans from a predictable catastrophe like Democrats did in 2008 (the Wall Street crash) and 2020 (COVID), I thought the predictable catastrophe would be caused by Trump’s twin investments in AI and crypto or RFJ Jr’s gutting of public health. Those catastrophes may well arrive in months ahead.

But Trump didn’t wait around for those catastrophes to develop. He went out and caused one by launching an illegal war on Iran. And even if Trump capitulates to Iran this week, there will still be a crisis far worse than the one caused by tractors in Ireland — which Fintan O’Toole predicts, “From these days, a serious far-right movement will at last emerge in Ireland” –after the last fuel shipments fall off a cliff starting, basically, now. Trump caused a crisis akin to the twin 1970s crises, and Democrats have done little to lay the groundwork to hold him accountable.

Democrats — in Congress and outside — have one job to do if they want to force accountability for that crisis. They need to tie Republicans to that catastrophe. There are Democrats like Mark Kelly who have the moral authority to make this a matter of the debt Congress owes to service members, to ensure that a compromised President doesn’t rent out the US military to whatever Middle East bone-chopper has built him a shiny tower. But for everyone else — and by everyone, I mean Schumer and Jeffries and rank and file members and people in the streets — the case is simple: Trump’s illegal war has not only violated one of the few promises Trump made, not to start stupid wars, but it has taken a shitty economy and turned it disastrous, and Republicans

Have

Done

Nothing.

I think Republicans genuinely hope if they stay on vacation, avoiding any public discussion of this war, they’ll avoid being tainted by it. It’s not their problem! They were never in a public hearing room with Generals explaining why Hormuz remains closed.

And that’s why I think Dems need to rethink impeachment. Until next January (assuming Democrats win back at least the House), it’s not a tool to remove Trump from office. It’s a tool to hold Republicans accountable because they refuse to remove Trump from office, they refuse to do any goddamned thing to protect America and the world from the catastrophic ramifications of Trump’s Iran war, they refuse to demand that Trump put actual diplomats rather than his buddies who stand to make a profit from service members’ sacrifice in charge of negotiations, or put someone other than a Fox News host in charge of the Pentagon.

Democrats are probably not going to peel off the nine people in the House to lead impeachment; they’re certainly not going to peel off the dozens in the Senate it would take to convict.  But at a time when the right is expressing its dismay about Trump’s insanity in various ways, many of them counterproductive to democracy, picking this fight puts a narrative to the coming catastrophe that just happens to be true.

Trump did this.

And it makes right wingers own both that narrative and their own complicity in it.

And the reason to do that is not just because it is the right thing, constitutionally to do. The reason to do that is because as the economy worsens there are going to be a whole lot of furious people looking for a villain. And impeaching the President is one of the few tools that Democrats can use — all of them, in and outside Congress — to explain how Trump’s Iran war, and Republican abdication of oversight of it, is the cause.

Holding Trump accountable for the Iran war, tying the Iran war to the economic malaise that is about to get a lot worse, is one of the few things that can, and should, unite those on the street with those on the Hill. But to do that they need to reconceive what impeachment could serve: to incur a political cost for Republicans because they refuse to hold Trump accountable.

Update: Here’s one example of how this might work. At a local event, Mike Lawler tried to distance himself from Trump’s war. Making him take responsibility for it could corner him politically.

Having largely sat on the sidelines as Mr. Trump began the war without congressional authorization, then abruptly announced a cease-fire and now is imposing a blockade — sending gas prices soaring amid persistent economic anxiety — Republican members of Congress like Mr. Lawler are facing mounting questions from voters, who do not appear satisfied by the answers they are getting.

“With the war in Iran, you have seen a short-term volatility in the oil markets,” Mr. Lawler said, pivoting to the conflict after an introduction focused on what he had done to address cost of living issues, immigration enforcement, and foreign policy challenges.

“Do something,” some attendees shouted. “It is Trump’s fault,” others jeered.

Update: Jamie Raskin has filed a bill to set up a commission to declare Trump unfit. I really don’t love this at all. It makes Trump’s unfitness a talking point, but doesn’t hold other Republicans accountable as directly.

Update: Jen Bendery reports that Senate Dems are going to force a War Powers vote every week. I like that approach!

The post Whatever Means to Call for Trump’s Removal, It Is a Tool to Expand Accountability for Iran appeared first on emptywheel.

But the actual files only reveal new damning information.

For example, they reveal that:

• Kash Patel was leaking classified information to Rudy Giuliani.
• The whistleblower was considered a “star performer,” with great knowledge of Russia and Ukraine.
• One of the witnesses was afraid to cooperate because he had seen what happened to Peter Strzok.

But one of the most interesting details is that the then Chair of the National Intelligence Committee, Amy McAuliffe, described finding the allegation credible because she had see Trump say something similarly inappropriate in a call with Xi Jinping.

The substance of what Trump said in that call is redacted (the paragraph was classified Secret/NoForn). But it pertained to Trump’s efforts to get benefits for farmers.

The detail is of particular interest given how badly Trump got his ass handed to him by Xi last year with China dropping most soybean purchases from the US until Trump squealed; Trump’s stupid war again Iran has only exacerbated the woes of US soybean farmers.

As Trump promises to blockade Iran’s blockade, as Trump dismisses allegations that China is arming Iran by claiming he could retaliate with tariffs, Trump’s top crypto funder, Justin Sun, is claiming World Liberty Financial has a backdoor to holders’ wallets.

If Trump is hiding that he said something inappropriate to China, it gives China more leverage over Trump personally.

The post Trump Said Something Inappropriate to Xi Jinping, Too appeared first on emptywheel.

It was a pretty catastrophic week for JD Vance and I love that for him.

Update: MoJo’s preview of the election focused closely on last year’s Pride march, which I’ve been thinking a lot about:

The 30th annual Budapest Pride march was scheduled for June 28, 2025. Several months before, Parliament amended the Assembly Act specifically to prohibit any demonstrations or gatherings for LGBTQ rights, and the prohibition would be enforced by facial recognition technology to identify anyone who organized or participated in such gatherings.

Since 2020, when Orbán first announced that despite Hungarians being “tolerant and patient” people, upon seeing a children’s book with LGBTQ themes, he demanded that “gays are to leave our children alone.” There is a “red line,” he said, “that cannot be crossed.” The next year, Fidesz banned the inclusion of any information about homosexuality or transgenderism in school sex ed classes, and depictions of homosexuality or sex reassignment in any media directed at people under 18. Appearing at CPAC in Budapest in 2023—where he received a standing ovation—Orbán announced his priorities, “No migration, no gender, no war.”

Timea Szabó is an opposition MP from Hungary’s Green or Politics Can Be Different (LMP) party, who has represented Budapest’s third district—whose population of 124,000 makes it akin to Hungary’s sixth largest city—since 2018 and has been in Parliament since 2010. She told me the government’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda, alleging that “sex change operations were happening in kindergarten,” was a new low for Fidesz. “I actually asked the president at an open committee hearing, ‘I’d like to hear actual statistics about how many requests you have had from families who wanted to change the sex of their kid,’” she recalled. “And she said, ‘Well, zero.’ I was like, then, why the hell are you doing this? How cynical do you have to be to make [LGBTQ] groups the enemy of the nation?”

Political pressure and police bans preceded the Pride event, even as the non-Fidesz mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony, welcomed the marchers and offered to host it. In response, Bence Tuzson, the minister of justice, warned him that doing so could land him in prison for a year. This was, Tuzson insisted, “in order to protect the rights of children.”

Karácsony dismissed the threat: “When the minister of justice is not aware of the laws in force, that is…the Fidesz government.” He went on to note that the last Saturday of June was official Hungarian Freedom Day. “So, of course, we are holding a municipal event on Hungarian Independence Day. This is Budapest Pride, and since there are already over 500 foreign participants—ministers, representatives, mayors—the English name is also justified: Budapest Pride.”

It was a beautiful early summer day, and the rally began at City Hall in Pest, snaked through the city center, and crossed the Elizabeth Bridge over the Danube. The crowd, clearly not intimidated by government threats, was enormous. Organizers estimated 200,000 people participated. Others thought the number was closer to 100,000, but either way, in a country of less than 10 million, the turnout was extraordinary. Small children marched, parents pushed strollers, young people danced, sang, and celebrated the show of solidarity.

The post Viktor Orbán Concedes to Péter Magyar appeared first on emptywheel.

The Saudis probably nixed the quickest way to make “peace,” — for the Iranians to let the US into their toll booth business, payable in Trump crypto (which genuinely was on the table at one point).

So now Trump has declared that he will blockade Iran’s blockade.

Even ignoring the effects this will have in Hormuz — it won’t alleviate fuel shortages, but it will give China more incentive to get involved — there’s something about which the geniuses in the White House may be unaware: Iran has a backdoor, a backdoor via which Trump’s boyfriend has been supplying Iran.

I maintain that this strike — described as an exclusively Israeli one — is among the most interesting and least noted developments of the war.

An Israeli strike on a naval outpost in the Caspian Sea targeted Russia’s support for Iran in the war, hitting a supply line that the countries have used to move ammunition, drones and other weaponry, people familiar with the matter said.

Last week’s strike was Israel’s first ever on the world’s largest inland sea. Far beyond the reach of the U.S. Navy, the sea connects Russian and Iranian ports about 600 miles apart, giving the countries a place to freely swap weapons along with goods such as wheat and oil.

The route has become especially important for transferring Iran’s Shahed drones—now made in both countries—which Russia has used to bombard Ukrainian cities and Tehran has used to strike airports, energy facilities and U.S. bases across the Persian Gulf.

Cooperation between the two countries has expanded during the war, with Russia sharing satellite imagery and improved drone technology to help Iran attack U.S. assets and other targets across the Gulf, people familiar with the matter have said.

Russia claims — who cares if the claims are bogus — that this is civilian trade.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry condemned Israel’s attack, calling the port an important trade and logistics hub that it actively uses for trade in civilian goods with Iran. Moscow also warned against expanding the war to the Caspian.

And the description of Israel’s efforts to avoid escalation with Russia leaves unmentioned Trump’s even greater love for Putin.

Israel has long sought to maintain good relations with Moscow, in part to avoid conflict in Syria, where Russia used to have a significant military presence. Russia’s changing stance in the region to more aggressively challenge the U.S. and its allies since the invasion of Ukraine has complicated Israel’s calculations.

Israel didn’t mention Russia when disclosing the attack to avoid angering Moscow and putting further pressure on it to get involved in the war, analysts said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin several times over the past few months.

Israel wouldn’t attack Russian ships that continue to ply the route, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

Analysts said that while the strikes were significant, Iran and Russia would likely be able to shift trade to other Caspian ports.

“It’s not going to completely lead to the decline of Iranian food security or Russian food security or even when it comes to drone transfers,” Grajewski said. “But it could disrupt the flow for a time.”

Iran would not be able to export oil via this backdoor (but that’s not much different from the sanctions in place before the war). But Trump would have to escalate to blockade Iran, as opposed to just the Strait of Hormuz.

The post Having Failed to Win a “Marathon” [sic] without Training, Trump Announces Blockade of Iran’s Blockade appeared first on emptywheel.

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

The post Fridays with Nicole Sandler appeared first on emptywheel.

Pope Leo and Archbishop and Martyr Oscar Romero

[Apologies in advance for the length, but it’s worth it. Trust me. Peterr]

Earlier I wrote that great tactics mean nothing if you have no strategy, looking at Trump’s war on Iran. Watching the story of one of Hegseth’s minions, Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, at work, makes it clear that when it comes to the war on the Vatican, Trump & Co. don’t even have good tactics. The story that kicked off this public mess came from (of all places) Bari Weiss’ old project, The Free Press, which various outlets then picked up and ran with, like this from “The Letters from Leo”:

In January, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States — and delivered a lecture.

America, Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.

As tempers rose, an unidentified U.S. official reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.

That scene, broken this week by Mattia Ferraresi in an extraordinary piece of journalism for The Free Press, may be the most remarkable moment in the long and knotted history of the American republic’s relationship with the Catholic Church.

[snip]

Ferraresi obtained accounts from Vatican and U.S. officials briefed on the Pentagon meeting. According to his sources, Colby’s team picked apart the pope’s January state-of-the-world address line by line and read it as a hostile message aimed directly at the administration.

What enraged them most was Leo’s declaration that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.”

The Pentagon was enraged that Leo accurately read the changing approach to the world by the US under the administration of Donald Trump? Really? Really? From Trump’s immigration policies to deploying iCE to beat up and kill folks on the streets of US cities, from Trump’s ever-changing tariff policies to shuttering multiple embassies and consulates, from Trump’s blowing up alleged drug-running boats with double-tap airstrikes to his abduction of Maduro, . . . yeah, saying that dialogue has been replaced by force doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to me. If the Pentagon was enraged by this, it’s not because it was false – it’s because it was challenged, and especially enraged because the challenge came from the first American Pope.

Colby et al. are following a well-worn playbook, seen in places like apartheid-era South Africa, Soviet-era eastern Europe, and Nazi Germany. Co-opt and cow the church if possible, and oppress them if that fails. That an unnamed Pentagon official pulled out the Avignon papacy only confirms Leo’s observation: under Trump, force trumps dialogue and consensus.

Since the Free Press article appeared, the Pentagon has pushed back, saying this account is overblown. From NBC 5 in Chicago:

But the Pentagon denied such claims, calling the Free Press’ characterization of it “highly exaggerated and distorted.”

“The meeting between Pentagon and Vatican officials was a respectful and reasonable discussion. We have nothing but the highest regard and welcome continued dialogue with the Holy See,” a War Department official told NBC News.

This, my friends, is the Pentagon in full retreat. They have been outflanked, and it’s only going to get worse.

When Pope Francis died, Trump was asked who he’d like to see elected as the new pope, and he replied “I’d like to be pope. That would be my number one choice.” Maybe this was a joke, like his posting of an AI image of himself in papal regalia. When Leo was elected, Trump’s reaction to the election of the first Pope from the United States, was “To have the Pope from America is a great honour.” Trump no doubt had seen the great outpouring of grief at the passing of Francis and the amazing reactions of cheers and joy from the crowds at the election of Leo — and this likely triggered him with thoughts like “This is what I want – the cheering crowds, the pomp and circumstance of public events that center on me.”

But the whole “first American Pope” thing doesn’t seem to be working out the way Trump wanted.

Since Leo took office, he has spoken often about the church and its obligation to stand with refugees and immigrants – especially after ICE invaded his home town of Chicago. Since then, US bishops have taken up his words (some more fervently than others). Retirement-age conservative bishops and cardinals are being thanked for their service and replaced by more moderate folks, including especially Trump’s pal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York [corrected]. His replacement, Ronald Hicks, is probably the polar opposite of the hard-charging conservative Cardinal happy to stand at Trump’s side. Last December, at the announcement of Hicks’ elevation, the NYT wrote “Bishop Hicks has advanced under the leadership of more progressive church leaders, including Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, an ally of Pope Francis who has prioritized immigrants and a welcoming stance toward L.G.B.T.Q. people.”

Elsewhere in the world, Leo has been doing much the same. In Spain, El Pais reports that he warned the executive committee of the Spanish conference of Bishops that his greatest concern in Spain is the far right that is trying to ‘instrumentalize the Church.'” This, of course, provoked a reaction from conservatives trying to minimize or simply deny this report.

In the past few days, folks have noted that Leo rejected an invitation extended by Trump through JD Vance to attend the July 4 celebrations in the US, presumably as the guest of Trump, allowing Trump to appear gracious and also an equal — if not superior — to Pope Leo. Leo apparently declined the invitation back in February. After all, Leo grew up in Chicago, where two authoritarians ruled throughout his younger years: Mayor Richard J. Daley (the Elder), and Cardinal John Cody. By the time he was ordained as a priest, Joseph Bernardin had become the archbishop of Chicago — about as far from Cody as one could get. Thanks to Chicago politics (inside and outside the church) Pope Leo knows the authoritarian playbook quite well, and chose not to get pulled in by this upstart authoritarian in DC.

He also knows how to fight back against authoritarians.

First, he knew he would be fighting these battles from the day he was elected pope. Indeed, the cardinals who elected him likely knew the same thing, and that is part of why they chose him. As Christopher Lamb wrote for CNN, “As the cardinals prepared to enter the conclave in early May, the fierce criticisms some of them had had of Francis melted away. The focus now was on how the next pope could continue his predecessor’s reforms and, crucially, exhibit a prophetic spirit which engaged with the world.” The phrase “a prophetic spirit” is church-speak for “speaking truth to power,” and with the death of Francis happening shortly after Trump took office again, there is no doubt where they wanted that prophetic spirit aimed.

Beyond elevating and supporting bishops willing to push back on Trump’s immigration policies, Leo himself has been quietly yet forcefully pushing back on Trump, and his bishops are taking up the challenge. For example, last December, the archbishop for US Military Services (Catholic chaplains and service members) spoke out loudly against the bombing of alleged drug boats, channeling not just Jesus but also Senator Mark Kelly and his colleagues:

“I call on our Nation’s leaders, legislators, and those specifically charged to direct our Armed Forces to respect the consciences of those who raise their right hands to defend and protect the Constitution by not asking them to engage in immoral actions,” Archbishop Broglio said in his statement. “Show the world our respect for human dignity and the rule of law.”

“In the fight against drugs,” he said, “the end never justifies the means, which must be moral, in accord with the principles of the just war theory, and always respectful of the dignity of each human person.”

He said, “No one can ever be ordered to commit an immoral act, and even those suspected of committing a crime are entitled to due process under the law.” The archbishop said the moral principle “forbidding the intentional killing of noncombatants is inviolable.”

“It would be an illegal and immoral order to kill deliberately survivors on a vessel who pose no immediate lethal threat to our armed forces,” he added.

For his own part, Leo did not simply decline the invitation to the US on July 4th, but replied with two significant actions.

First, beyond declining Trump’s invitation, he also scheduled alternative plans for July 4th. In February — shortly after the little chit-chat at the Pentagon — the Vatican News announced where Leo would be that day – the island of Lampedusa. “On July 4, the Pope will visit an island that held a special place in Pope Francis’ heart after his journey in 2013—the first of his pontificate. In the morning, Pope Leo will travel to the island, which has become a gateway for thousands of migrants from Africa and the Middle East to Italy and Europe.”

Folks, the Vatican has centuries of experience with ritual and symbolism, and Leo’s announcement was a very understated yet powerful reply to Colby’s bluster and the threats of Avignon raised by that unnamed Pentagon official. That an American pope would choose to spend the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US at an immigration center for people coming from what Trump has described as “shithole countries” to enter Italy and Europe is an unmistakable rebuke. You know, the folks that JD Vance condemned while campaigning for Orban in Hungary this week.

But it will get worse for Trump, because in March it became clear that Leo also has an event scheduled for July 3:

Pope Leo XIV, the first U.S.-born pope, will be awarded the National Constitution Center’s 38th Liberty Medal on the eve of the United States’ 250th anniversary in July.

Leo will deliver an acceptance speech virtually from the Vatican during a public ceremony outside the National Constitution Center on Independence Mall on July 3.

“The Holy Father is deeply grateful to the National Constitution Centre for this prestigious award, in such a meaningful anniversary for the American People, as they are called to reflect on the 250 years of their history, holding the Constitution of the United States and Liberty as hallmarks of their heritage for future generations,” Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, said in a press release.

The National Constitution Center said Leo was chosen for the honor for his “lifelong work promoting religious liberty and freedom of conscience and expression around the world, ideals enshrined by America’s founders in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

If the Pentagon was paying attention here, they would recognize that most frightening words in that announcement were these: “Leo will deliver an acceptance speech.”

While Trump bends and distorts and ignores the Constitution, Leo is being honored for promoting what the Constitution calls for. Unlike Trump, Leo is a trained public speaker.

Be afraid, Undersecretary Colby. Be afraid, Catholic convert JD Vance. Be very afraid, President Trump, because Pope Leo and his bishops are sounding and acting more like Archbishop Oscar Romero.

They were the words that signed his death warrant. On March 23, 1980, St. Oscar Romero, contemplating the accelerating civil war, desperate to forestall it, made a final, emotional appeal. This one was not to political leaders in San Salvador and Washington, but to his own beloved people, the campesinos who volunteered for or were conscripted into the Salvadoran army, police and National Guard.

He lamented that they were “killing their own brothers and sisters” and told them in a homily broadcast live by diocesan radio that God’s law must prevail: “You shall not kill!”

“No soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God,” Romero said. “No one has to observe an immoral law. It is time now for you to reclaim your conscience and to obey your conscience rather than the command to sin…. In the name of God, then, and in the name of this suffering people, whose laments rise up each day more tumultuously toward heaven, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression.”

His plea was met with thunderous applause in San Salvador’s Metropolitan Cathedral and by quiet fury elsewhere in El Salvador, where a final plan to silence this meddlesome priest was set in motion.

Archbishop Romero did not issue this appeal lightly; by his nature he had been a great respecter of authority and he surely knew the mortal peril he created for himself by imploring soldiers to resist, refuse or ignore orders issued by their superiors. But the barbaric acts of the death squads and the expanding reign of terror being experienced by everyday Salvadorans, particularly people in the countryside, had become more than he could bear.

He put his moral authority to use at the cost of his own life. The next day, March 24, he was assassinated while saying Mass at the chapel of the Divine Providence Hospital in San Salvador.

[snip]

On March 15, in a pastoral letter read from the pulpit across his diocese, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso implored immigration enforcement agents not to follow orders that violated their consciences. “No one has to obey an illegal order,” he wrote, asking agents required to execute the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies street-to-street and face-to-face to “carefully discern the moral requirements of the Gospel at this moment with integrity and honesty.”

[snip]

Further cover to potential conscientious objectors in the U.S. military was provided on Jan. 19, when three Catholic cardinals—Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C. and Joseph Tobin of Newark—amplified themes first expressed in an address by Pope Leo XIV to the Vatican’s diplomatic corps. The pope warned at that time: “War is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.”

In a joint statement, the U.S. cardinals wrote an unusually strong rebuke of a presidential administration: “We renounce war as an instrument for narrow national interests and proclaim that military action must be seen only as a last resort in extreme situations, not a normal instrument of national policy.”

“We seek a foreign policy that respects and advances the right to human life, religious liberty, and the enhancement of human dignity throughout the world.”

Shorter Leo to the Pentagon: I see your Avignon, and raise you Archbishop Oscar Romero.

I’m really looking forward to that July 3 speech.

UPDATE:

Via Crux, the Vatican spokesperson has a reaction to The Free Press article:

On Friday, the Vatican formally debunked a viral news report alleging that U.S. officials summoned a Vatican diplomat to the Pentagon to lecture him on the nation’s military might, threatening the Holy See to step in line.

[snip]

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni flatly denied the report in a statement Friday, saying that “As confirmed by His Eminence Christophe Pierre…his meeting with Mr. Elbridge Andrew Colby was part of the papal representative’s regular mission and provided the opportunity for an exchange of views on matters of mutual interest.”

“The narrative offered by some media outlets about this meeting is completely untrue,” Bruni said.

The Vatican nunciature in Washington had previously distributed a statement to the press also denying the portrayal of the meeting, confirming the Jan. 22 meeting at the Pentagon to discuss “current affairs,” but characterizing the interaction as “routine.”

“The Apostolic Nunciature is grateful for the opportunities to meet and dialogue with government officials and others in Washington to discuss areas of mutual concern,” the nunciature said.

Here’s the thing. This “flat denial” isn’t as flat as it appears, nor is the story “formally debunked.” They don’t deny the meeting took place, which is kind of a big thing. At best, they are “denying the portrayal of the meeting,” which is like the regular post-summit reports between the US and USSR reporting that the sides had “a full and frank exchange of views.”

Think about the possibilities:

(A) The Free Press took the existence of the meeting and spun a story out of whole cloth. Yes, this gets them eyeballs for a couple of days, but once the story falls apart, they’ve got serious egg on their face.

(B) The story is substantively accurate, which pisses the Pentagon off because they look bad, and which pleases the Vatican for the same reason. The Pentagon pushes back, and the Vatican issues this sorta-kinda denial to allow the Pentagon to save face a little bit.

I lean toward B, in that the meeting did happen. Someone had to have shared this with The Free Press — either the Pentagon in an effort to show how manly and strong they are (especially after Leo’s Easter condemnation of Trump’s social media post about destroying Iran’s civilization), or by the Vatican in order to show just how stupid the Pentagon is. To me, I’d say it was the Vatican’s work, as a way to reinforce what Leo said throughout Holy Week. If it was the Pentagon, though, then they are stupider than I thought.

Maybe The Free Press exaggerated things, but they got the basic meeting itself right. Given that the nuncio met with Colby, there’s no way in hell (so to speak) that this was a friendly and routine meeting. Seeing as how Trump’s rhetoric toward Iran was growing increasingly bellicose back in January, even as military assets were being staged in the Middle East, the topic of Iran had to be the central topic under discussion, and that would be anything but a friendly conversation.

The post Poor Tactics Make Any Strategy Impossible, Vatican Edition appeared first on emptywheel.

He did so at a press conference purporting to introduce a new Fraud Task Force.

For example, just this week and it’s only Tuesday, a criminal defendant was sentenced and the department obtained two additional guilty pleas in matters totaling over half a billion dollars in healthcare and COVID fraud. If you think about that, just since yesterday, we had a guilty plea in a $160 million healthcare enrollment fraud scheme and a sentencing in a $100 million COVID-19 fraud, and a guilty plea in $160 million healthcare fraud scheme as well. Each of these cases represents countless hours of dedication from the prosecutors and the federal agents and local law enforcement who worked them. The Department of Justice is holding criminals accountable for stealing over half a billion dollars from taxpayers. And across our US attorney’s offices, all over this country, we currently have over 8,000 fraud matters underway. Unfortunately, as you’ve heard a lot about recently, because it’s true, these cases represent a fraction of the fraud ripping off our country every day.  Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, this department, working closely with the task force to eliminate fraud, is supercharging efforts to take down every fraudster and bring them to justice. I want to thank the Vice President and Anti-Fraud Task Force Chair [sic] Andrew Ferguson for their focus on this issue and for empowering this department to go after criminals who steal from the government like never before. Our goal is to prevent this from ever happening again. Because of this administration’s leadership, fraudsters, scammers, tax chiefs, or anyone who lies to get rich off the generosity of the American people should be on notice. Now, this isn’t new for this department. We have a storied history of combating fraud and bringing criminal actors to justice, but the department has never adopted a comprehensive and coordinated approach to investigating and prosecuting fraud against taxpayer dollars and taxpayer payer funded programs. With over a trillion dollars at stake every single year threatened by increasingly sophisticated and opportunistic fraudsters, the time for this comprehensive and coordinated approach is now.

The bid by serial fraudster Donald Trump to claim to fight fraud — but only fraud targeting the government, primarily fraud committed by Democratic constituencies targeting government spending — has largely flown under the radar of the near-Armageddon Trump indulges in on a daily basis.

But it is clearly another attempt to weaponize the government against perceived Trump opponents, even while providing Trump cover for his own unprecedented corruption.

This post lays out a framework for what I hope to be more sustained focus on this fraudulent effort going forward.

Trump is a serial fraudster

As Todd Blanche knows as well as anyone, Donald Trump and his corporate entities have been serially adjudged to be fraudsters.

Legal judgements against him or his corporate entities include:

March 31, 2017: Approval of a $25 million settlement for victims defrauded by Trump University.

December 10, 2019: A $2 million settlement with the State of New York for misusing the Trump Foundation, including as a slush fund that Corey Lewandowski spent in advance of the Iowa primary, payment to the DC Preservation League to support an ad for Trump International, and for a donation to Pam Bondi.

January 13, 2023: Trump Organization fined $1.6 million for tax fraud involving compensating executives with benefits not reflected in salary figures (this case did not involve Trump personally).

February 16, 2024: A ruling that Trump Organization misrepresented the value of its holdings to obtain preferential lending rates. Among Trump’s claims was that his 10,996 square foot penthouse was three times larger than it was. Yesterday, Trump renewed his bid to get this verdict thrown out.

May 31, 2024: A jury convicted Trump of falsifying business records to hide the reimbursement he gave Michael Cohen for the $130,000 Cohen paid Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election to keep silent about fucking Trump years earlier.

August 1, 2023 and August 27, 2024: Two separate grand juries indicted Trump for — among other crimes — conspiring to defraud the federal government by using fake electors to attempt to steal the 2020 election. Trump’s 2024 victory prevented this from litigated through to trial.

The Rick Scott precedent

Donald Trump is not the only fraudster harbored by the Republican Party. In June 26, 2003, DOJ declared the settlement it made with HCA Inc, then run by now-Senator Rick Scott, the largest healthcare fraud in history, $1.7 billion.

HCA Inc. (formerly known as Columbia/HCA and HCA – The Healthcare Company) has agreed to pay the United States $631 million in civil penalties and damages arising from false claims the government alleged it submitted to Medicare and other federal health programs, the Justice Department announced today.

This settlement marks the conclusion of the most comprehensive health care fraud investigation ever undertaken by the Justice Department, working with the Departments of Health and Human Services and Defense, the Office of Personnel Management and the states. The settlement announced today resolves HCA’s civil liability for false claims resulting from a variety of allegedly unlawful practices, including cost report fraud and the payment of kickbacks to physicians.

Previously, on December 14, 2000, HCA subsidiaries pled guilty to substantial criminal conduct and paid more than $840 million in criminal fines, civil restitution and penalties. Combined with today’s separate administrative settlement with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), under which HCA will pay an additional $250 million to resolve overpayment claims arising from certain of its cost reporting practices, the government will have recovered $1.7 billion from HCA, by far the largest recovery ever reached by the government in a health care fraud investigation.

The same people howling about prison time for fraudsters had absolutely no problem with historic fraudster Rick Scott running their Senate re-elect in 2024.

Trump is claiming credit for fraud Democrats found

Meanwhile, Trump is feigning a concern with fraud by using cases uncovered by Democrats.

Blanch mentioned three cases at his presser. One was charged in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration.

Another arose from efforts made by CA’s Department of Health Care Services, co-conspirators were charged in 2024.

36. Through my review of records and conversations with others, I understand that in July 2022, DHCS identified Monte Vista as a high-risk Medi-Cal provider billing for high-cost non-contracted generic drugs. DHCS further determined that 90% of Monte Vista’s Medi-Cal beneficiaries had no prior history of using these high-cost drugs.

37. On November 15 and 16, 2022, DHCS conducted an unannounced onsite visit at Monte Vista. Based on reports from the onsite visit, I understand that the pharmacy staff present were C.A., Pharmacy Technician; B.C., Pharmacy Technician; A.M., Clerk; and Mekail, who introduced himself as Pharmacist-inCharge and Owner. 38. When asked to explain the billing process, Mekail said that he billed the prescriptions when received. When asked if he would bill Medi-Cal if he did not have the inventory available, Mekail responded, “Yes.”

39. DHCS collected a sample of prescriptions onsite, which included faxed prescriptions from Anderson.

40. During DHCS’s onsite visit to Monte Vista, auditors observed Mekail making several phone calls to an undisclosed caller in which he would ask the audit team questions and relay the response to the undisclosed caller. During one instance, one of the DHCS auditors noticed an incoming call from “Paul Randall” on Mekail’s phone. However, when the auditor asked Mekail who was calling him, Mekail told the auditor that it was his father.2

The third arose out of a Qui Tam suit (that is, from a whistleblower) first filed in 2020, then amended in 2022. DOJ charged their cooperating defendant in December 2024, and the criminal charges heralded in recent days were filed just weeks into Trump’s term. Press releases describe that HHS OIG played a role in the investigation.

That’s true of another case that Kash Patel bragged about this week. It came from a tip to Michigan’s HHS IG, which referred it to HHS OIG.

On June 30, 2024, the State of Michigan’s HHS-OIG (“MDHHS-OIG”) received an anonymous, emailed complaint alleging that Rabih Hamdan and Mohammad Ham(lan, who were brothers, engaged in health care fraud using various pharmacies called Nledex, Prime Pharmacy and Corner Med Pharmacy. The complaint alleged “fictitious prescriptions“ were billed and a “runner“ was used to pay beneficiaries $500 per month, which allowed the billing of fraudulent claims to Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance for “Medications that were never dispensed or ordered from any wholesalers.” MDHHS-OIG initiated invoice review audits of all three pharmacies, identifying significant Medicaid overpayments based on drug invoice shortages. Essentially, the pharmacies did not have enough drug purchases to support their billing to the Medicaid program. Prime Pharmacy and Corner Med Pharmacy were Mohammad Ham(ian’s pharmacies and the basis for the charges filed January 28, 2026 in Case: 5:26–cr–20040. In that case, Mohammad Ham(ian was charged via criminal information with conspiracy to commit health care fraud, based largely on his alleged practice of billing insurers for medications the pharmacies never ordered.

The Somali-based fraud (led by a white woman) that formed the cornerstone for this effort, including a 43-month sentence imposed today, was first charged in 2022.

Partly, of course, this was a matter of timing: particularly for the fraud that exploited the leniency of Trump’s COVID programs, investigations were delayed and took time. But some of this (including a number of the Minnesota cases) comes from  investigations led by Democratic-led states.

Trump fired the people who were looking for fraud

Trump has exacerbated this problem in several ways. Notably, just four days into the job last year, Trump fired eight Inspectors General, including several — at HHS, DoA, and SBA — who had been focused on COVID-related fraud, who between themselves had identified over $183 billion in fraud and waste and expected to find $200 billion more. As noted above, HHS OIG was involved in several of the cases DOJ has been boasting about this week and at least some of those cases would have been developed under Christi Grimm.

[T]he Inspectors General describe identifying $183.5 billion in material impact.

As noted in this post, that includes substantial work cleaning up after COVID relief rolled out by Trump, particularly from Mike Ware, work which lead DOGE Treasury Official Thomas Krause relied on to suggest that DOGE could be effective. In Ware testimony to Congress that Krause cited, Ware described up to $200 billion in fraud just in Small Business related relief alone.

Using OIG’s investigative casework, prior OIG reporting, advanced data analytics, and additional review procedures, we estimate SBA disbursed more than $200 billion in potentially fraudulent COVID-19 EIDLs and PPP loans. This estimate represents approximately 17 percent of disbursed COVID-19 EIDLs and PPP funds — specifically, more than $136 billion COVID-19 EIDLs and $64 billion in PPP funds. Since SBA did not have an established strong internal control environment for approving and disbursing program funds, there was an insufficient barrier against fraudsters accessing funds that should have been available for eligible business owners adversely affected by the pandemic.

That’s what Trump did by firing Ware and the others: halt proven efforts to do what DOGE is incapable of — and only pretending — to do.

Those Inspectors General sued to get their jobs back, but the lawsuit largely failed on standing grounds — and to the extent it is pending, will likely fail given SCOTUS’ other endorsements of Trump’s firings.

Trump’s DOJ has protected their own fraudsters

After firing the people who’d had great success finding fraud, Trump set about making fraud of close associates disappear. The SEC, for example, dropped a number of crypto related cases involving Trump and his allies.

The S.E.C., the top federal regulator that polices wrongdoing in the financial markets, is no longer actively pursuing a single case against a firm with known Trump ties, The Times found. It backtracked against every firm that either has relationships with the Trump family’s crypto businesses or has donated to his political causes. The agency’s only remaining crypto cases are against little-known defendants without clear ties to Mr. Trump.

[snip]

The S.E.C. also petitioned a judge to freeze a fraud case against the crypto mogul Justin Sun and his Tron Foundation, one of four cases the agency handled that way in hopes of striking a deal. Agency officials have yet to announce a resolution of the case.

All told, the Trump S.E.C. inherited 23 crypto cases — 21 from the Biden years and two from the first Trump term. It pulled back from 14 of them.

Eight of those were against defendants who formed ties to the president or his family, either before or shortly after their cases were resolved.

[Justin] Sun, for example, has bought $75 million worth of World Liberty’s digital token. His company, Tron, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. In court papers, Mr. Sun and Tron said the S.E.C. lacked evidence of fraud and jurisdiction to sue.

And just weeks before the Binance case was dismissed, the firm participated in a $2 billion business transaction that used digital currency from World Liberty. That deal is poised to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trumps.

[snip]

In the case against Ripple, which donated nearly $5 million to the Trump inaugural, the agency tried to undo its own efforts.

During the first Trump term, the S.E.C. accused Ripple of depriving investors of material information in selling its crypto token. Last year, after rejecting some of the agency’s accusations, a federal judge ordered Ripple to pay a $125 million penalty for some securities violations.

Yet after Mr. Trump returned to the White House, the S.E.C. tried to reduce the punishment to just $50 million. The judge chided the government for its change of heart and rejected the new deal.

Some of these businesses experiencing regulatory beneficence, like the Winklevoss twins, Tyler and Cameron, also donated to Trump’s ballroom. Not only did the Wiklevosses get the SEC to dismiss a suit against them (ironically, because Tish James had already made the defrauded investors whole), but Trump’s one-time nominee to CFTC claimed his nomination was withdrawn as a favor to the Wiklevoses.

In screenshots of the text exchange that Quintenz posted to X, Winklevoss flagged a 2022 CFTC lawsuit against Gemini, the crypto exchange he co-founded, in which the agency accused Gemini of making false and misleading statements concerning a bitcoin futures contract the firm was pursuing in 2017.

Gemini paid $5 million to settle the lawsuit in January, but in June filed a complaint with the CFTC’s internal watchdog arguing that the company was unfairly targeted.

“I’d like to understand your thoughts on this and how you plan to align with President Trump and the Administration’s mandate to end the lawfare and make amends for it,” Winklevoss texted Quintenz.

Quintenz, whom Trump announced he had tapped for CFTC chair in February, responded that the matter should be handled by a confirmed CFTC chair and said he would look into it if he got the job.

And all the while, there’s the pump and dump schemes that the Trump family serially engages in — and that’s ignoring the insider trading that seems to follow all of Trump’s market moving decisions, including war.

Then there’s the garden industry Pam Bondi’s brother, Brad, developed, making fraud case go away.

On January 17, 2025, DOJ charged Ms. Carolina Amesty, a former Florida State Representative, with two counts of theft of government property, alleging that she fraudulently obtained $122,000 worth of small-business loans during the COVID-19 pandemic.4 These charges carried a potential 20-year prison sentence.5 Fortunately for Ms. Amesty, she had retained Mr. Bondi in December 2024. Although DOJ entered into “active discussions” with Mr. Bondi two weeks after President Trump took office, the government repeatedly sought delays and extensions—prompting the judge assigned to the case to remark that the parties had already been given sufficient time to resolve their issues —before abruptly ending its criminal investigation and declining to seek an indictment.6 Similarly, in September 2024, DOJ charged Mr. Sidarth Chakraverty, a property developer, with 11 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.7 Mr. Chakraverty, who had retained Mr. Bondi in July 2025, likewise saw his charges abruptly dismissed, even though just weeks earlier multiple DOJ career prosecutors, as well as President Trump-appointed interim United States Attorney Thomas Albus, reportedly believed that criminal penalties were warranted.8

Notably, the favorable outcomes obtained by Mr. Bondi’s clients appear to extend beyond DOJ dismissals. Mr. Bondi served as lead attorney for Mr. Trevor Milton, a Utah billionaire who was convicted in 2022 on federal securities fraud and wire fraud charges.9 Yet, President Trump gave Mr. Milton a full and unconditional pardon on March 27, 2025.10 This pardon not only allowed Mr. Milton to avoid his four-year prison sentence, but also relieved him of court-ordered restitution to shareholders harmed by his fraudulent conduct.11 Even when Mr. Bondi loses, he apparently wins.

Trump has pardoned fraudsters and screwed victims

Brad Bondi was by no means the only one with access to preferential treatment for fraudsters. Indeed, the only thing more shameless than Trump’s own looting of the government are the pardons he gives to his fellow fraudsters.

An analysis from Gavin Newsom, whom Trump is trying to frame with enabling fraud, found that Trump has excused $2 billion in fines and restitution.

Based on restitution amounts listed on the U.S. Department of Justice’s official clemency pages for Trump’s first term, plus restitution amounts tied to current-term clemency actions, the amounts owed by those Trump has pardoned total more than $1.3 billion in court-ordered restitution and pending restitution requests. When forfeiture and fine amounts tied to Trump’s clemency actions are added, the combined total reaches nearly $2 billion in court-ordered and court-requested financial penalties.

These figures reflect restitution amounts associated with criminal convictions or requested by prosecutors in pending cases, along with fine and forfeiture amounts tied to clemency warrants or publicly reported DOJ penalty figures. They are not confirmed remaining balances at the moment clemency was granted and may include joint-and-several obligations that appear on multiple defendants’ records. But they represent money courts ordered — or prosecutors asked courts to order — returned to victims, and penalties meant to reimburse the public and deter fraud.

There have been a whole series of stories on the abusive pardons Trump offered. Some include:

• After Paul Manafort lied to cover up what really happened with Konstantin Kilimnik, Trump pardoned Manafort for his tax, money laundering, and foreign influence peddling crimes, resulting in the forgiveness of millions in restitution.
• Trump pardoned Roger Stone for lying to cover up his source of advance knowledge on the Russian attack; there may be a second pardon. Then Stone returned the favor by convincing Trump to free Honduran former president, who was convicted on trafficking crimes.
• After Steve Bannon advised Trump as Trump attempted to steal the 2020 election, Trump pardoned him for bilking over $1 million from MAGAts trying to support Trump’s border wall. DOJ is in the process of making Bannon’s contempt conviction — for blowing off the January 6 Committee — go away.
• Trump commuted David Gentile for $1.6 billion in fraud, claiming that the prosecution — started during Trump’s first term — was the result of weaponization by Biden’s DOJ.
• Trump commuted the sentence of Philip Esformes, who broke Rick Scott’s record on Medicare fraud with $1.3 billion in false billings.
• Trump pardoned a 50-year sentence against Lawrence Duran, who pled guilty of $205 million in Medicare fraud.
• Jason Galanis and Devon Archer, who both testified against Hunter Biden, got clemency (with restitution requirements forgiven). Then SEC dismissed a complaint against Archer (SEC Chair, Paul Atkins, had testified in his defense but recused from that decision). Right wingers have falsely excused these grants of clemency by claiming that Hunter was not charged in the scheme, which targeted Native Americans, but that’s not the sketchy business in which Hunter was involved with Archer.
• After Trump pardoned Jared’s Daddy, Charles, in his first term, he made Charles Kushner his ambassador to France. Trump also pardoned Jeanine Pirro’s ex-husband for tax evasion. Both Kushner and Pirro had served their sentences.
• Trump pardoned the husband of Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger, Robert, for the very kind of federal health care fraud he’s squawking about now.
• After Trump commuted the sentence of Adriana Camberos in his first term, he pardoned her for a second fraud case in which she was convicted in 2024.
• After lobbying from grifters like Jack Burkman, Jacob Wohl, and Laura Loomer, Joseph Schwartz was pardoned for tax crimes related to the collapse of his nursing home business (he was similarly pardoned in his state Medicaid conviction). One of his pardon lobbyists, Josh Nass, was subsequently accused of extortion relating to pardon lobbying.

NYT has focused closely on the ties between campaign donations and Trump’s pardons.

Last March, Mr. Trump pardoned Trevor Milton, the founder of electric vehicle start-up Nikola, who had been sentenced to four years in prison on allegations he had defrauded his investors. Before Mr. Trump granted the pardon, his campaign received donations from Mr. Milton and his wife totaling more than $1.8 million.

Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker, and two others, including the former governor of Puerto Rico, were charged in 2022 with wire fraud among other crimes in a bribery scheme. Mr. Herrera and the others pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, but Mr. Trump pardoned them before sentencing. The clemency grants came after Mr. Herrera’s daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million in 2024 — and then another $1 million in 2025 — to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.

By all appearances, Donald Trump has absolutely no problem with fraud, and much less concern for the victims of fraud. He just wants a piece of the pie.

Trump shifted resources away from established fraud teams

More recently — as documented by Bloomberg — DOJ is scavenging currently functioning fraud units to staff its new organization.

The Criminal Division fraud section’s health care, tax, and market integrity units will shift, at least temporarily, under the control of newly appointed national fraud enforcement division head Colin McDonald, said people familiar with the plans. Their current boss, Trump-appointed Criminal Division leader Tysen Duva, was unsuccessful in trying to protect dozens of his trial attorneys specializing in public benefits and other financial crimes from moving to the new unit, added the individuals.

Former DOJ officials have panned the fraud division as a ploy to pursue politically motivated targets.

The new chain-of-command was formalized later Tuesday in a memo to DOJ employees describing it as an interim shift of 30 days. At that point a permanent transfer of those units would be assessed and the deputy attorney general would make the final decision.

[snip]

Attorneys in Duva’s division expressed concern and feelings of betrayal at the reversal, which they see as potentially decimating the long-established fraud section to satisfy a new political agenda item, said the people, who spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation. Some saw the move as especially baffling given that the three offices slated for transfer—health care, tax, and market, government, and consumer fraud units—contributed to what DOJ touted as a record-setting year in prosecutions and recoveries for public coffers.

This will have the effect of taking resources away from fully committed teams already looking for fraud and put them on a team being directed to look for just certain kinds of fraud, not dissimilar to the effect that firing the Inspectors General who were finding hundreds of billions in fraud committed in Trump’s COVID programs.

Trump appointed the guy who helped criminally frame Joe and Hunter Biden

One more recent personnel development betrays the corruption of all this. A few weeks back, JD Vance announced that Scott Brady (who had been stashed at HHS) would serve as Executive Director of this unit.

The coverage announcing this role consistently misstate Brady’s corrupt role under the first Trump administration, claiming that he led the investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden that resulted in Hunter’s tax settlement.

The former western Pennsylvania prosecutor who led an investigation into the son of President Joe Biden has been picked by the Trump administration to lead an anti-fraud campaign.

Scott Brady, a former U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh, will be the executive director of the new White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud alongside members of Trump’s cabinet, according to a spokesperson for Vice President JD Vance on Monday.

At the group’s first meeting Friday, Vance said the creation of the office was inspired by cases of Medicaid fraud in Minnesota.

“We’re going to force the bureaucracy to take this seriously and work together as political principals to make sure that we stop allowing fraudsters to steal the American people’s money,” Vance told reporters on Friday. And Vance alleged the Biden administration rolled back anti-fraud protections: “It became a massive, massive problem.”

Brady didn’t help find fraud. There’s nothing he reviewed that ended up in the actual investigation of Hunter Biden (indeed, Rudy Giuliani hid the existence of the laptop he obtained). What Brady did do was create the opportunity for Alexander Smirnov to criminally frame Joe and Hunter Biden, right in the middle of the period when Trump was being impeached for trying to criminally frame Joe and Hunter Biden — a prosecution Trump’s DOJ continues to work to wipe away. He also had a remarkably difficult time finding the links between the GRU’s hack of Emmanuel Macron in 2017 and the Roger Stone buddies who leaked those hacked documents.

The fraud fraud

The entire right wing has used the work of fraud teams whose past efficacy they’ve used to build a storyline to support Trump’s redirection of those prosecutorial efforts under the direction of rampant partisans. It is a propaganda effort to claim that something Trump has built his career on — fraud! — is instead a Democratic issue, as when the Daily Signal spun a poll result that would reflect broad concerns about corruption — including the nearly half of voters who view Trump as corrupt — as instead something limited to benefits fraud.

As widespread government fraud emerges across the country, a new poll finds that Americans are not only overwhelmingly alarmed by taxpayer abuse but increasingly blame it for the rising cost of living.

The poll, released Tuesday by the nonpartisan watchdog on government spending, the State Financial Officers Foundation, found that 83% of voters believe that “fraud or misuse of government funds contributes to higher taxes or higher costs for families.”

An even larger number of the survey’s respondents, 87%, said they are concerned about “fraud or the misuse of taxpayer money in government programs.”

This is why the inclusion of Scott Brady in this effort is so important: he has already used DOJ resources in an effort that resulted in criminally framing Trump’s opponents.

Donald Trump rolled out a task force not to create fraud convictions, though as in Minnesota, some of the investigations that have been proceeding for years will produce them. On the contrary, as he did in 2020 and 2024 thanks to Scott Brady’s past work, Donald Trump rolled out a task force to create a storyline about fraud.

Any fraud but his own.

Update: The AP caught the government in — and got them to admit — to a false claim in its targeting of NY State.

Oz claimed that New York’s Medicaid program last year provided some 5 million people with personal care services, which assist people in need with basic activities like bathing, grooming and meal preparation. That would add up to nearly three-fourths of the state’s 6.8 million Medicaid enrollees.

“That level of utilization is unheard of,” Oz said in the video, adding in his post that New York needs to “come clean about its Medicaid program.”

But the real number of New Yorkers who used those services last year was about 450,000, or between 6% and 7% of total enrollees, CMS spokesman Chris Krepich told the AP this week. He said the agency misidentified New York’s approach to applying billing codes and had since refined its methodology.

The post The Fraud behind Trump’s Fraud Task Force appeared first on emptywheel.

You’ve no doubt seen the Melania video in which she made some claims:

• I’ve never been friends with Epstein … or his accomplice, Maxwell
• Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time
• My email response to Maxwell cannot be categorized as anything more than casual correspondence
• I am not Epstein’s victim
• Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump
• I’m not a witness or a named witness in any of Epstein’s crimes
• I have never been legally accused or convinced [sic] of a crime in connection with Epstein’s sex trafficking

The biggest denial may be this one:

I met my husband by chance at the [sic] New York City party in 1998. This initial encounter with my husband is documented in a detailed [sic] in my book, Melania.

The entire stunt seemed like a response to Michael Wolff. After all, when Melania listed the people who’ve had to retract claims — James Carville, The Daily Beast, and Harper Collins, in conjunction with a biography of the Andrew formerly known as Prince — she did not mention Wolff (or Hunter Biden), whom she has been threatening to sue for some time, with whom she has been stuck in litigation for months.

She has threatened Wolff in the past, who has made claims about how she met Trump, whether Epstein had fucked Melania before Donald did, and whether Donald and Melania first fucked on his plane. But thus far that litigation remains pending, and she didn’t mention him (or Hunter Biden, whom she also threatened to sue) in this appearance.

Wolff has many recordings about what Epstein told Wolff, whether Epstein’s claims were true or not.

But I’m more interested in another detail.

Melania cites her own book for the definitive account of how she met Donald (she has done this in past lawsuits).

Why would she do that? She has a witness to some of this: Paolo Zampolli, the agent who imported her on the same Einstein visa scam as Epstein used for his victims.

Zampolli not only remains in the Trump circle, but he flew to Hungary to do errands for Russia with JD Vance this week.

And that’s interesting, because Zampolli appears to be the kind of guy who would use immigration status as a means to political leverage.

According to this March 20 story, last year, Zampolli asked ICE to deport the mother of his child, so he could get custody.

Last June, the man credited with introducing President Trump to his wife asked the administration for a favor.

Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent turned presidential special envoy, had learned that his Brazilian ex-girlfriend was in a Miami jail, arrested on charges of fraud at her workplace. They had been in a custody battle over their teenage son. Now he saw an opportunity.

He reached out to a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, explaining that his ex was in the country illegally, according to records obtained by The New York Times and a person familiar with the communications. Could she be put in ICE detention? That could help him get his son back.

The official, David Venturella, promptly called the agency’s Miami office to ensure that ICE agents would pick up the woman from the jail before she was released on bail, according to the records and a person with knowledge of the conversation who requested anonymity to discuss it. During the call, Mr. Venturella noted that the case was important to someone close to the White House.

The woman, Amanda Ungaro, was placed in ICE custody and ultimately deported, an outcome that may well have happened regardless of Mr. Zampolli’s meddling. But the ICE official’s willingness to spring into action for a Trump ally — even one in a low-level, largely ceremonial role — reflects a recurring theme of the second Trump administration: The levers of the federal government can be pulled to settle a personal score.

Zampolli had more success than Karoline Leavitt’s brother Michael did (who allegedly tried to get his Brazilian baby mama deported, too, with no success). Ungaro was deported.

A Xitter account by that name threatened — yesterday! — to take legal action against Melania.

And after Melania’s speech, Paolo (this is the fucking Daily Mail again, as if this is all the same campaign) promised to — under oath — do what her book cannot: vouch that she is a legal(-ish) immigrant, vouch that Paolo, and not Epstein, introduced her to the future President.

Ambassador Paolo Zampolli said Thursday that he’s ready to testify before Congress to prove that he was the individual who introduced President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.

Zampolli made the pronouncement in a phone interview with the Daily Mail after the First Lady made a stunning statement in the White House on serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein – an announcement that apparently even took the President by surprise.

Among the comments she made, the First Lady denied rumors that it was Epstein who introduced Melania to her future husband.

‘I’m ready to testify in Congress, in front of Congress, to say who introduced the First Lady, and I’m ready to even bring another 50 witnesses to say they were present that night,’ the Italian-American diplomat said in an interview with the Daily Mail. ‘The whole world knows this. This is old news.’

Melania has been suing frantically since last year to get ahead of some Epstein disclosure, Arguably, that’s what her book and propaganda film tried to do: affirm that she was not just imported as a sex toy for rich men like Donald Trump.

But until now, Paolo chose not to affirm what Melania wants him to: that the story she told in her book about her immigration status, about how she met her spouse, are true.

Update: One more point about Melania’s video. She stated, clearly, she was not Epstein’s victim. But DOJ generally redacted all women’s names as possible victims. So now that Melania has stated she was not a victim, Congress should demand references to her name be unredacted.

The post Melania’s Immigration Witness, Paolo Zampolli, Asked to Get His Baby Mama Deported appeared first on emptywheel.