Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: New details of how an American president and an Australian billionaire bonded over their mutual self-interest help to document the transactional ethos of the Trump presidency, and show how Mr. Trump melded his White House with his personal business in a way that, according to prosecutors, had ramifications for national security. Mr. Pratt was hardly the only favor seeker circling Mar-a-Lago, which became the fulcrum of the president’s two overlapping worlds, and a marketplace of…

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Joyce Vance writes: It turns out it wasn’t just a bad day for Trump, as I captioned my column Thursday night. It was a bad week. A really bad week. After Sidney Powell’s guilty plea, there was Kenneth Chesebro’s plea. His was to a felony charge of filing false information, but like Powell, he spends no time in prison and will be eligible under Georgia’s first-time offender provision to have his record expunged after he completes his probationary sentence successfully….

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CNN reports: Two stalwart allies of former President Donald Trump flipped against him this week, a staggering turn of events that could now pose a grave threat to his ability to fend off criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The rapid-fire developments are a massive boost for prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, and the separate but overlapping federal case against Trump that was filed by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. The pleas are…

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Rolling Stone reports: Sidney Powell was the wildest of MAGA diehards — someone who swore long past the bitter end that Donald Trump won by a landslide in 2020, and insinuated that a long-dead Venezuelan dictator helped hatch a plot that flipped votes away from her guy. That’s why the former president and much of his inner circle didn’t think the conspiracy-addled lawyer would ever cooperate with prosecutors seeking to convict the ex-president. “Crazy as she was, she really believed…

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The Daily Beast reports: As the deranged attorney who once had Donald Trump’s ear and led the litigation front of his 2020 coup attempt, Sidney Powell is sitting on a mountain of secrets. Now that she’s flipped, she might be the most dangerous witness yet against the former president. On Thursday, just one day before the start of her Atlanta trial, Powell surprised the nation with a guilty plea. She cut a sweetheart deal, avoiding years behind bars for her…

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The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s decision to declassify evidence given by a former British spy about the former US president’s alleged links with Russia led to the disappearance of two Russian sources, according to a court document. Christopher Steele, who used to run MI6’s Russia desk, compiled the notorious “Steele dossier” investigating Trump’s connections to Russia. In a witness statement released on Tuesday, Steele said publication of his testimony to the Mueller investigation on the matter, originally classified secret, was…

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CNN reports: US District Judge Tanya Chutkan has put into writing her limited gag order that bars Donald Trump from making public statements about witnesses who might testify against him in the federal election subversion case as well as prosecutors and court staff. Trump’s public statements pose “grave threats to the integrity of these proceedings,” especially those that could be construed as harassment and intimidation, Chutkan said in the order released Tuesday. The written order expands upon what Chutkan articulated…

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Jesse Wegman writes: Most of the concern over the independent presidential campaigns of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and the No Labels party has focused on the risk that they could draw votes away from President Biden and throw the 2024 election to Donald Trump. That’s understandable, given what happened in 2000 and 2016. But there is another reason to fear these candidacies, and it’s right there in the Constitution: a contingent election decided by the House of Representatives,…

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ProPublica reports: The party guests who arrived on the evening of June 23, 2022, at the Tudor-style mansion on the coast of Maine were a special group in a special place enjoying a special time. The attendees included some two dozen federal and state judges — a gathering that required U.S. marshals with earpieces to stand watch while a Coast Guard boat idled in a nearby cove. Caterers served guests Pol Roger reserve, Winston Churchill’s favorite Champagne, a fitting choice…

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NBC News reports: The judge presiding over the upcoming damages trial against Rudy Giuliani said Friday she will tell jurors that the former Trump lawyer intentionally hid financial documents and other records in defiance of court orders. In a five-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said the move was necessary given “Giuliani’s continued and flagrant disregard of this Court’s August 30 Order that he produce financial-related documents concerning his personal and his businesses’ past and present assets” and other…

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