Let’s not forget what the real purpose of the Durham probe was: to discredit the Mueller investigation. Did it succeed?

  

John Durham just released his final report and we don’t need to waste any more time discussing it than necessary. Predictably Trump and the Republicans are using his “findings”—more like opinions—to denounce the FBI and the Robert Mueller investigation that followed. However, we still cannot ignore the fact that outside his “opinions” about how the FBI had no “factual” basis for even starting the initial probe that eventually morphed in the Mueller investigation, Durham conveniently overlooks the fact that the probe was sanctioned by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and overseen by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after Session recused himself from the case.

First a reality check: Rosenstein should not be seen as an unbiased observer in the investigation; as the New York Times had reported, he was a “loyal soldier” of Trump’s and did what he could to shield him from where the Mueller probe could have led. While he allowed Mueller to investigate Paul Manafort’s foreign financial dealings with pro-Russia elements in Ukraine which eventually led to his conviction for concealing payments made to him by those elements, Rosenstein knee-capped any investigation into Trump’s own financial ties with Russian entities, which certainly would have suggested, if not collusion, the potential for policy decisions influenced by those ties and detrimental to the U.S. and its interests. Indeed, Trump’s eagerness to believe Putin’s lies concerning election interference and computer hacking, as well as his cold shoulder to our allies in favor of “friendship” with Putin, certainly suggests that. Trump was not as “patriotic” as he likes to portray himself.

Rosenstein kept Mueller tied to Russian connections to the Trump campaign, and Manafort was for a time Trump’s campaign manager. Manafort’s ties with Russians could have served as a secret conduit between Trump and his “friends” in Russia, but we’ll never know because as we discovered, Manafort was an uncooperative witness, providing the investigation with unhelpful or contradictory information, and like everyone else facing jail time—with the exception of Michael Cohen—was eventually pardoned by Trump.

Thus any claim by Durham that there was “nothing” there is due mostly to the fact that the Mueller investigation was prevented from taking the next step and investigating the probability that Trump was compromised by his financial connections in Russia. We also know that Roger Stone was in contact with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, who provided him updates when Russian hackers dumped emails meant to damage the Clinton campaign, and we know of at least one phone conversation in which Stone discussed this with Trump. Of course Trump did once publicly call on Russia to hack into Clinton’s emails; the absurdity of this is that it is “different” to say something publicly rather than privately: one avenue is supposed to be merely “bluster,” while the other is actually intended.

Instead, what we see that Durham’s final report is merely a compendium of information already in the public record. He “explains” his failure to prosecute—let alone convict—more than three people is that the agents involved committed no actual crimes, merely showing “poor judgment” and were perhaps a little too “eager” to investigate Trump and overlooked a paucity of “hard evidence.” That’s it. Durham doesn’t actually suggest any FBI “reforms” other than those already made, and he didn't find any “deep state” conspiracy against Trump. He did apparently spend a great many useless hours at taxpayer expense investigating Hillary Clinton, who was not part of his mandate, so that was obviously a partisan tit-for-tat that also came up empty.

But this ignores an essential truth, and that is that Durham’s investigation was intended by Trump and Session’s successor, William Barr, to attack the Mueller investigation and de-legitimatize it. Durham’s report repeatedly refers to the Mueller investigation's failure to find convincing evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian entities, while ignoring the fact that numerous people connected to the campaign lied under oath, and that there were in fact Russian entities and individuals who were charged with attempting to undermine the election process in Trump’s favor.

The Durham probe should be seen as what it was meant to be: a hit job orchestrated by Trump and Barr to prevent the truth from being investigated at all. The Mueller report did find crimes in which one man (Manafort) was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison before being pardoned, and others who made guilty pleas. The only “crime” that Durham was able to “convict” on was one guilty plea for leaving out one word in a FISA report. The Durham investigation was simply a 4-year, $6.5 million boondoggle desperate to justify itself, and Durham’s self-serving opinions should not be construed as “evidence,” but as a way to disguise the fact that it was more pointless than the Mueller investigation ever could have been.

 

Judge's anti-SLAPP ruling in Manson case shows how malicious actors abuse the law

Before MeToo went into full swing, the Summer 2015 edition of the Rutgers Journal of Law and Public Policy was warning of the abuses of the anti-SLAPP laws to protect false and defamatory claims in the name of “public interest.” The journal noted the anti-SLAPP laws were originally  intended to protect workers and labor organizations who criticized working conditions or corporate policy from being sued. As we see today, anti-SLAPP laws are a way to clear court dockets of cases in which the truth is a questionable commodity, and principally benefit women making accusations against public figures in politics, media or entertainment. Only in a state like Virginia that doesn’t have an anti-SLAPP law is why justice in the Johnny Depp defamation trial and the phony gang rape story against a University of Virginia fraternity that appeared in Rolling Stone had a chance of being served.

Anti-SLAPP laws are now so broad that it has gone beyond just an average citizen commenting on or interpreting the words or actions of people who are not even “public figures,” but to protect defamatory claims made by people solely on their word without evidence and without due process. Even when the target’s livelihood and reputation is destroyed because of false or unproven claims before recourse to due process rights, accusers are protected from prosecution by anti-SLAPP laws. We have seen many cases where the victim of false claims find that there is no point in suing an accuser because these laws protect their "free speech" right to make false claims, even with "actual malice."

So now we come to the Marilyn Manson case, where last week Judge Teresa Beaudet released a 37-page ruling which essentially ignored all the important claims against Evan Rachel Wood and Ilma Gore, and gutted the defamation case against them. It was the UK judge in the Depp libel case all over again: it overlooked demonstrably false claims by the defendants, declined to see the “merit’ in an admittedly falsified document, was blind to the orchestrated conspiracy (with the help of a “checklist”) by Wood and Gore to get others to make evidence-free claims against Manson, and generally relied on the “believe all women” mantra and the anti-SLAPP provision  that the truth did not really matter:

…any written or oral statement or writing made in a place open to the public or a public forum in connection with an issue of public interest, or any other conduct in furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right of petition or the constitutional right of free speech in connection with a public issue or an issue of public interest.

That means you can say that your house was invaded by Martians and you were gang-raped by them on the orders of some public figure, and you have a “right” to be “believed.” Sure, people can say you are crazy, but if you believe it, or it is in the furtherance of a “public interest,” then it is the “thought” that matters, as the Rolling Stone editor who wrote the defamatory UV article tried to “justify” herself with.

Much of the ruling centered around the short film “Groupie,” where it was claimed that at least one of the participants was “underage”—meaning under 18. I have already written about the absurdity of the belief that 16-year-olds don’t know their own minds, but the issue seemed to be what proof there was that there were any “underage” participants. We are presented with an absurd discussion by the judge about whether Gore was lying, didn’t know and just “speculated” that there was, and whether Wood’s failure to ascertain the truth and just put it in her “Phoenix Rising” documentary as being “true” was or was not inherently defamatory.

Throw in the fact that a named individual was not only not “underage” at time (she was 21 or 22), and that she had not committed suicide as Gore and Wood had “heard” was not "relevant" to the charge that they were just making things up as they went along regardless of the damage it was causing to another person's life.  Colonel Kurtz interviewed this alleged “victim” on her YouTube channel, who revealed she had been interrogated by a Los Angeles detective and testified that everything that Wood and Gore claimed about the video shoot was a fabrication.

None of that mattered to the judge. It’s OK to destroy a man’s life and “reputation”—admittedly in Manson’s case the latter is a bit hard to do—because any speech short of advocating murder is protected as long as it is to the cause of a sacrosanct “public interest,” as is violence against women, even when there is a question of a claim being true or just malicious. On the Metro buses I ride every day there are signs about “Sexual misconduct—comments, gestures and behavior—is off limits on Metro. I you see it, report it.” Well fine, except that you typically never see that “behavior” on the bus (just people ignoring the ordinary rules and being rude and disrespectful), and it seems to me that it is just gaslighting by some activist group paying Metro for advertisement, encouraging people to make false complaints either to excuse their own behavior, or because it happens “all the time” and they might as well make their own “interpretations” based on their “feelings.”

Those who have been paying attention to the case thanks to Colonel Kurtz know about the fake FBI letter that was supposedly about the “threat” posed to Wood by Manson more than 12 years after they split up and it was only two years ago that she decided that the “embarrassing” activities she consented to do were really “non-consensual,” “grooming,” “sexual abuse” and we might as well just throw in “trafficking” for good measure. Actually, what seems to be the truth is that the real purpose of the falsified letter was that Wood wanted to remove herself from a custody dispute over the son she had with her ex-husband; we are told that in a court document Wood is charged with inserting her own paranoid fantasies into her young son’s mind, which essentially constitutes child abuse. Of course the truth isn’t “pertinent” to this judge’s decision-making process, and she ignored the relevance of the fake letter as suggesting that Wood and Gore were capable of lies and creating false "evidence."

There was plenty of other blah, blah, blah and yada, yada, yada in the judge’s decision. In fact, for the most part it was confusing and irrelevant to the facts. It essentially said that even lies that destroy a man’s life is “protected speech.” Most sensible people know that a country based on such an assumption is inherently unjust. We are not talking about “speech” between friends, we are talking about “speech” that the mainstream media runs with without regard to the truth and everyone knows about it and believes is “true” based simply on something someone said. How can we trust a media that even eats its own over rumors and innuendo? Hell, Fox News just replaced Tucker Carlson with Trump’s former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who regularly spewed his false election conspiracy claims.

The judge didn’t even mention Ashley Smithline in her judgment, nor was the fact that the abuse claim of Manson’s former assistant Ashley Walter had been dismissed for lack of evidence was in any way “relevant.” Manson’s attorney Howard King denounced the ruling, pointing out that “The Court telegraphed this outcome when it refused to consider the bombshell sworn declaration of former plaintiff Ashley Smithline, which detailed how women were systematically pressured by Evan Rachel Wood and Illma Gore to make false claims about Brian Warner [aka Marilyn Manson]. The failure to admit this critical evidence, along with the Court’s decision to not consider Ms. Gore’s iPad, the contents of which demonstrated how she and Ms. Wood crafted a forged FBI letter, will be the subject of an immediate appeal to the California Court of Appeal.”

What is particularly striking to me is that this judge presumes that a jury will look at this case the same way she does. A jury could certainly be suspicious of a fake FBI letter, at least one witness who recanted her claims that had been made under pressure, witnesses who denied that they were ever abused by Manson, and witnesses who say they were pressured by Wood and Gore to make false statements but refused, and witnesses who contradicted the specific abuse claims made by the accusers, as well as the lack of evidence for the claims. I would have also expected that a psychological examination of Wood be conducted, given her bizarre behavior in regard to her custody dispute with her ex-husband. We could even throw in the fact that Gore’s persona is hardly less “questionable” than Manson’s is; her motivations are certainly worth examining.

Well, good luck with that. The judge left intact for a “tentative” May 1, 2024 trial (which we can hardly believe will be a fair one if she is still the judge) Manson's claims of “hacking and wrongful impersonation.” Doesn’t sound like much, and it isn’t in this case. Online impersonation is when a “malicious actor” uses another person’s online identity to harass, intimidate, threaten or make false claims against a target. Smithline in her statement charges that her social media account was “hacked” into for this purpose by Gore, but Manson will have to prove that Wood and Gore hacked into his social media sites and planted false inputs. While these are crimes, they don't touch the essential claim of defamatory conduct and false accusations.

One other thing that should be of interest in this case is the current state of the investigation into the abuse claims made by Wood and Gore. Los Angeles investigators refused to file charges against Manson based on the results of their findings, suggesting that there was no “there” there; but given the political climate they wanted LA prosecutors to make the final decision to act on it or not. The last thing this judge should want is the further erosion of her credibility by the prosecutors declining to bring charges against Manson.

A country in "chaos"?

 

Destroying someone’s life by engaging in a conspiracy of false claims, led by an individual who we see has psychological "issues” that  fills even her own child with paranoid delusions, wasn’t enough for a California judge to allow a charge of willful defamation to move forward. I downloaded the PDF file of the judge’s decision to strike the defamation aspect against Evan Rachel Wood from Marilyn Manson’s lawsuit; it should be noted that Los Angeles prosecutors after all this time seem to have found insufficient evidence to charge Manson with any crimes related to Wood’s claims, and had the investigation cleared him without the obviously politically-motivated delay, and it was found Wood and her co-conspirators’ claims to be essentially evidence-free, then the judge’s decision could be seen as especially egregious. I will take a look at the decision next week and see if it has any similarities to the judge’s bizarre decision in Johnny Depp’s UK libel case; just a cursory examination already suggests bias.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was declared “guilty” by a New York court of “sexual abuse”—not rape as claimed by a former gossip writer—and ordered to pay her $5 million. Of course the question is whether this will make any difference with Trump supporters, and he didn’t waste any time degrading the accuser. Of course we saw that it didn’t take long for Republican voters to get over the “shock” of his indictment in the Stormy Daniels payoff, like rats who scramble to get back aboard the ship when they realized that as long as they stick together and don’t panic, the ship may still stay afloat a while longer. Such is the state of “morality” and “ethics” in this country, which of course if you listen to someone like Rep. Jim Jordan during one of his committee hearing rants, neither isn’t really the point; it doesn’t matter if what he says doesn’t make any sense, it is the “show” that matters.

Of course what Republicans think is an “entertaining” show to their gullible constituency looks like something else entirely to friends and foes alike in other countries. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russian and Chinese leaders are salivating over the spectacle of Republicans deliberately bringing this country to the fiscal cliff and giving it a kick over it merely for partisan politics. As has been pointed out by many, Republicans are pure hypocrites when it comes to the debt ceiling: a majority votes for a “clean” bill when a Republican is in the White House, but then reclaim their phony party of “fiscal responsibility” hypocrisy when a Democrat is in office.

Haines noted that our foreign enemies can portray this as “chaos” and this is what happens in countries with democratic governments. Of course “chaos” is used as an excuse by people with fascist impulses to rule like dictators. Such is the likes of Ron DeSantis, who identifies as Italian-American; perhaps Mussolini is his secret “idol.” We seldom see this in Western European countries where social programs are sacrosanct by all political parties, and where high taxes are the price people know they have to pay to maintain these programs in their old age. But in the U.S., old age programs are held hostage by far-right fanatics, and the people most affected by their destructive tendencies are the least of their concerns. They are only obsessed with their own power, and what results is of little interest to them as long as the other party is damaged  more than they are.

But then again, the complete lack of understanding of how fiscal uncertainty effects the value of the dollar and financial and commodity markets is something we saw before, and Republican irresponsibility was largely to blame for the financial panics of 2001 and 2007. And were not all those tax cuts for corporations and the rich that every Republican administration passes supposed to be a “boon” to both the economy and creating all that “extra” tax dollars paid by “ordinary” people from all those new “high-paying jobs” created? Didn’t we learn anything from the fraud that was “trickle-down economics” that only increased the gap between the rich and everyone else?

So what else is chaotic in this country? Almost every day this year that has been a “mass shooting.” Yet how many of them were “worthy” of a “national” half-mast order by the federal government? Four. It seems that only certain types of mass shootings are worthy of the “honor”: a minimum of six deaths and some political angle to it. Five deaths don’t make it; there were 32 victims at the birthday party shooting in Alabama, but only four died—and besides, it wouldn’t “count” anyways because of suspected gang involvement. Domestic murder/suicides don’t count either.

The Allen, Texas mass shooting last week made the “grade” because the shooter, a Hispanic, was reportedly a right-wing extremist who targeted Asians, according to media reports. Oh, wait, five of the eight dead were non-Asian, and four were Hispanic, including two children. Asians of course are law-abiding people who don’t do horrific crimes like this; oh, wait, there was the Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay mass shootings this year. I guess what the point is here is that if we don’t want to be hypocrites about all of this, flags should be at half-mast all year long as a testimonial to gun violence in this country; nobody is "innocent" in all of this. But hey, we can’t help ourselves; that is the price we have to pay for our “freedom”—and worth every life spent, right?

Meanwhile, the media is catching on to the fact that Florida under DeSantis continues to be a hothouse for experimentation in fascism; even some in his own constituency are tiring of his war against Disney and its insistence on its free speech rights. We also learn that some extremist nut-job named Stew Peters has taken up residence in Florida and apparently plans to be the next Alex Jones. It isn’t enough that Jones was ordered to pay his entire bankroll and more to the victims of his lies, even though it appears he is trying to claim “bankruptcy” by hiding his money in shell companies or signing it over to family members.

Crazy is as crazy does. Peters is a white guy who supposedly was a “rapper” in between bounty hunting and far-right podcasting. His made a film called Died Suddenly, which claims that Covid vaccines killed millions of people “suddenly.” Of course all those stories about Covid-deniers who died “suddenly” from the virus, and some even belatedly “recanting” their previous beliefs, were left out of the film, but Peters isn’t interested in those stories because they just get in the way of the far-right conspiracy fiction he wants to tell.

Peters was interviewed recently by the BBC, in which it was pointed out to him that among other things he fabricated “evidence” from material that pre-dated the pandemic, and he was undermining his credibility by insisting that NFL player Damar Hamlin, who collapsed on the field during a game, had “died suddenly” from the vaccine. Hamlin, of course, is not only not dead, but his injury was due to a heart condition that was triggered by a hard hit during the game. When confronted with reality, Peters claimed that Hamlin was “indeed dead” and that his public appearances had been “faked.” Not for him to worry, though: he’s got an audience that is sucker for both the cleverly-crafted lie—and the not so “clever.”

And yet it seems to me that most people don’t think any of this is a “big deal.” Life goes on, right? Here in Seattle, that Big Earthquake could happen at any time, as could Mount Rainier blowing its top. Since I’ve been here I experienced a couple of “shakers,” but that was a “long time ago,” and out of sight, out of mind. We’ll “deal” with it when it happens—and of course when you just wait for disaster to happen, it is usually too late to do anything about it; all that is left to do is to try put everything back together with the rubble left behind, having learned nothing.

 

When age doesn’t bring "wisdom"

 

While Republican debt ceiling hypocrisy is in full swing, there is another, more dangerous game they are playing, and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein...

 

 

...seems to be playing right into their hands. Feinstein’s illness from shingles has kept her away from Senate duties and her responsibilities not just to her constituents, but to the country. Although we are told that after much criticism from her colleagues and in the media she is "on her way," her illnesses don’t seem to be going away anytime soon, and it concerns not just her physical health, but her mental health as well, since shingles does affect the brain. 

Feinstein’s mental and physical health has been an issue for a few years now. Just a year ago the San Francisco Chronicle reported concerns from fellow senators that she was unable to “recognize colleagues” or “keep up with arguments in the chamber.” The Chronicle reported concerns that her “memory was rapidly deteriorating” and it was felt that she could “no longer fulfill her duties without the her staff doing much of the work required.”

Feinstein was 88 at the time, and since then The New York Times and others have called for her resignation and replacement because of the damage being done to the Democratic agenda, most egregiously on judicial appointments since she sits on the judiciary committee and her vote is needed to bring forward judicial nominees. There is no greater need at this time to counter the seating of far-right judges with their extremist "cultural" agendas.

Feinstein was at least cognizant enough to understand what is at stake (or simply taking the criticism "personally"), and in an effort to forestall further anger at her prolonged absence from the Senate, she suggested a temporary “replacement” on the judiciary committee, but we are talking about the non-existent ethics of Republicans here, and they predictably defeated the motion.

Republicans know how to play the “game,” which means they don’t let concepts like fair play, morality or ethics get in the way; they are corrupt to the bone and only care about power, the fascist variety if they can get away with it like they are in Florida. 

But Democrats--what a bunch of losers. They readily eat their own over the tiniest infraction (particularly if there is some gender politics angle), and they don’t know how to play hardball or make quid pro quo deals anymore even within the party membership when their agenda is on the line. 

We saw this coming with “new” Democrats like Bill Clinton, who chose to work with far-right Republicans like Newt Gingrich to pass laws on financial “reform,” social programs, immigration and crime that turned out to be disastrous.

Clinton did nominate radical feminist Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the U.S. Supreme Court, and one suspects that this was on the “suggestion”—or “else”—of Hillary. Ginsburg was a mostly reliable left-wing vote on the court, and because of her feminist political leanings she opposed anything that smelled of the “patriarchy,” or at least from the white side. 

Naturally Ginsburg never seemed to realize that most women don’t consider themselves feminists, since the term for many implies as destructive an agenda and that of the radical far-right. And although I wouldn’t exactly put Ginsburg in the same boat as Clarence Thomas, what they did share was a tendency to use their own  “personal” agenda in place of “judgment.”

So why am I bringing Ginsburg into a discussion about Feinstein? A few moments of consideration should make that clear. Like Feinstein, Ginsburg was too arrogant and self-centered to have the gift of foresight. While Feinstein’s thoughtless insistence on quitting on her own good time as the months passed by without her vote in the Senate to move forward on an increasingly lengthy logjam of judicial nominees, Ginsburg arrogantly refused to acknowledge that her time might come up at moment.

Again, it was for personal political reasons that had nothing to do with common sense or reality; in 2016 Ginsburg began to use the term "she" in reference to the next president, and who she wanted to nominate her replacement; obviously she assumed this would be Hillary. One reality was that for 21 years until her death in 2020, Ginsburg faced a series of cancers and other illnesses that she refused to acknowledge the seriousness of, even in 2019 claiming she was “cancer free” before dying of pancreatic cancer a year later at 87. The other reality, of course, was that Hillary lost the election.

People called Ginsburg an “icon” and “hero.” But hindsight tells us her refusal to face reality and resign while Barack Obama still had sufficient time to nominate her replacement proved to be disastrous for at the very least her own personal agenda. Even some female commentators today chafe at the charge that it is “misogynist” to criticize Ginsburg for failing to see that in the last years of Obama’s presidency that the wind of change had moved in the opposite direction, and that Hillary Clinton’s election was no “gimme.” 

Ginsburg didn’t help her case after the 2016 election by whining about the “macho atmosphere” that was the typical feminist “explanation” for Trump’s victory. She, like most feminists, were at a loss to explain why 53 percent of white women in 2016 (as would a similar percentage in 2020) voted for Trump instead of “history,” so she had to find the usual feminist scapegoats.

The damage done is most clearly seen in the overturning of the supposedly sacrosanct Roe v. Wade with the help of Trump’s three Federalist-approved nominees. With John Roberts joining the minority who opposed the overturning of Wade, it would have taken that one vote to prevent it. 

There almost certainly will be more decisions approving the right-wing “culture war” agenda set by Republican-dominated states. Dorothy Samuels, formerly of the New York Times, observed that Ginsburg’s “passion” for “equality” was being undone by the “extraordinarily self-centered thing” she did in failing to read the tea leaves, which  “helped to give us a court that for a long, long time is going to be undoing the equality rulings that she was part of.”

Feinstein is now being accused of similar self-centeredness in having as one of her “legacies” potentially being the disastrous failure of the Democrats to take advantage of the opportunity they have to counter the far-right’s effort to control the country’s federal judiciary system as well as the Supreme Court, and deny the majority in this country at least their right of "choice." Name-calling by gender activists won’t change that reality.