I’ve been out of pocket all day, so I’m trying to catch up on what’s been going on. It seems like it’s been another dumb one but one that’s given the Base a collective stiffy that their denial of this universe’s reality actually meant something. Like I said yesterday, though, I’m not doing the “X days of the 2020 election” joke because the fair’s left, kids, and all that’s left to do is details.
It hasn’t stopped them from trying, though. Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis headed some sort of to-do at a Wyndham hotel in Gettysburg, PA. Trump himself was supposed to go but canceled at the last moment when it was revealed COVID-19 had been found in amongst the crowd, including Giuliani’s failson Andrew, who gets paid $95 grand a year for little more than playing golf with the president.
Anyhow, Giuliani and Ellis gave what they called testimony to the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Policy Committee and offered what they called proof over shenanigans in Pennsylvania’s final count. Trump did call in and rambled on with some barely coherent jeremiad about how he “won big” and the energy industry’s with him, and gave as much evidence for that as the rest of the proceedings.
In any event, none of this has any legal binding because it was done in a hotel’s banquet hall and not a court, and no one was speaking under oath to any legal authority. The Base has been squealing about “Article II” but they don’t know what that involves, it seems, so I don’t know what they mean by it, either.
It’s all rather moot as Pennsylvania took to certifying votes for the electoral meeting come December 14. A judge has ordered a halt, however, but Governor. Tom Wolf says it’s baseless and he plans to appeal. Our legal sources say it’s pretty much buncombe either way. For his part, Joe Biden has continued to put together his Cabinet and prepare to take over the office on January 20. The base is still in an orgasmic haze, Democrats are laughing their asses off, and people who actually know how this all works and what the score really is just let go another sigh.
In other interesting news, Trump announced a pardon for Gen. Michael Flynn in a tweet. This has also given the Base a raging hard-on as it’s a full pardon for a guy they’ve been lusting over for a while. Former National Security Advisor Flynn, you will remember, pled guilty to obstructing justice and issuing false statements during the Robert Mueller investigations back in 2017. He’s dickered back and forth, claiming he was “forced” into pleading guilty and William “The Pope” Barr’s Department of Justice eventually dropped the suit though the judge in question put the whole matter in whole.
Anyhow, Trump pardoned Flynn, which means he’s admitting he was guilty of what he was accused of, but it might not be the slam dunk for which the Base thirsts. For one, his initial plea agreement got him (and his son, Junior) off the hook for more serious charges. Now that it’s violated, those charges could be in season again. Secondly, there’s no precedent for a president pardoning someone who’s a co-conspirator, another first for the Trump Administration. That means the pardon could be ruled unlawful and even invalidate other pardons Trump issues for his co-conspirators.
Finally, depending on the scope of Flynn’s crimes – which he admits guilt to, remember – he could possibly be vulnerable to state-level criminal charges. Time will tell, but how this gets particularly thorny for Trump is if Flynn is completely pardoned, he’s no longer in danger of double jeopardy and thus loses any Fifth Amendment protections he might have had. Possibly.
So he would be forced to testify against Trump, which could mean jail time for him. If he refuses to testify against Trump, Flynn could be charged with felony obstruction, which wouldn’t be covered by the pardon, so he could wind up doing more jail time than he was originally sentenced to. So this all might blow up in both their faces. Again, time will tell. It’s important to remember nothing is written in stone at this date.
Let’s end with some enjoyable news. Yellow turd David Perdue, Georgia’s senior senator who’s facing a runoff election against Jon Ossoff, was caught engaging in insider trading earlier this year. He used his position as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower to make some stock trades with defense industries based in Georgia. This is known without a doubt, and his fellow Republican Senator from Georgia, the excretable Kelly Loeffler, is also under fire for using her position on a COVID-18 task force to make herself even richer via the New York Stock Exchange, which her husband runs.
However, thanks to an investigation by The New York Times, solid evidence has surfaced that he’s used insider knowledge of COVID-19 to profit in the stock market. It all revolves around an Atlanta-based firm Cardlytics, where Perdue was a board member before becoming a Senator. Now, I’ve looked up the company and can’t for the life of me figure out what they do. “Transform marketing with purchasing intelligence,” what in the blue hell does that mean.
Anyhow the company sent an email to Perdue “accidentally” saying big changes were coming and it was just a coincidence he sold off $1 million in the company’s stock. The DOJ moved away from investigating this when COVID-19 happened, but new information suggests Perdue directly acted on the information and told his bookie at Goldman-Sachs to make the trade, which is totally insider trading.
Perdue, you will remember, has been running from Ossoff since the latter fed the former his lunch in the one pre-election debate the pair had. He’s a scumbag of the first order and even if he wins re-election, this taint will hopefully stick to him like dogshit on his shoes. Like I said, a little happy to end with.
Dear Y'all 