Highlights from Jack Smith’s deposition at the House Judiciary Committee

I’m only three hours in. Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has stated that there was evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to convict Donald Trump for January 6 and its leadup. Here are the highlights I found significant:

1.) Donald Trump committed fraud when he used his speech to fraudulently “target a lawful government function”. Smith said Trump could exercise his freedom of speech regarding the election outcome. He was free to lie to the public about the outcome of the election. But his freedom of speech became a federal fraud crime when he took his case to court without evidence of election fraud and then used those accusations of fraud to take over the Capitol during the electoral college count. According to the law, fraud is not protected by the First Amendment.

2.) Following up on the first highlight, he and his co-conspirators filed a fraudulent charge of election fraud in New Mexico. They were running out of time to file this charge so to beat the deadline, they filed the paperwork knowing they had no evidence.

3.) When Trump asked the Georgia Secretary of State to find more than 11,000 votes for him, he was asking election officials to dilute the vote, making the winning vote total meaningless. That violates election laws.

4.) He specifically targeted urban areas in several critical states with the intent to invalidate the ballots with no evidence that the ballots were fraudulent.

5.) Jim Jordan seems obsessed with the fact that the AG was able to get meta data about phone calls and texts to and from the Capitol from the White House. The data collected only showed who called whom and the date/time stamp. Why was Jordan so upset?

Becaaaause…

6.) Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, was directing congressmen and senators to slow down the proceedings of certifying the electoral college votes in order for the mob to breech the capitol and stop the “lawful government function”.

If you’re listening, what did you find interesting?

Heather Cox Richardson recaps 2025 from a historian’s perspective

HCR gives us a rundown of all the significant events that happened in 2025 and ties them together in ways that I missed. There is a lot of insight here and she’s honest about what’s coming next year.

“But even now there is hope left. I will not give you counsel, saying do this or do that. for not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part what shall be. But this I will say to you: your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true.”

Galadriel to the Fellowship

Trump loyalty bites Lauren Boebert in the butt

Is it just me or does it seem like some of Trump’s most loyal, vocal, outrageous fans in Congress are the first Republicans to hold him responsible and demand accountability?

I never would have expected LAUREN BOEBERT to jump on the discharge petition for the Epstein files and then stand up to Trump in the situation room of the White House and not buckle under pressure. Lauren Boebert who is a foot shorter and a couple hundred pounds lighter than Trump, probably had to look up at his orange face as he loomed over her and screamed F-bombs at her, threatened her, throw ketchup at her.

Something tells me that Lauren knows what it’s like to be one of Epstein’s victims. Just a hunch.

So, Lauren actually gets one of her bills passed in Congress lately. It’s to complete a drinking water project that was started in 1962. Lauren’s district has about 50,000 people (might be the total population for all I know) who have well water that periodically dries up, has a high salt content, and radioactive metals. The bill was to finish the project to bring drinking water to those people.

See this video from Bryan Taylor Cohen with Mark Elias on the situation in Colorado and Trump’s pressure on the governor to pardon Tina Peters, one of Trump’s 2020 election droogs who tried to tamper with voting machines there.

It passed the House unanimously. Yep, every Democrat voted for it. They have no reason to like Lauren Boebert but it was the right thing to do. If anything, that demonstrates how important it is to elect people to Congress who won’t screw you just because you don’t live in their district or wear a stupid red hat. (I think of it as The Mark of the Beast but that’s probably a holdover from one of those Tuesday night Bible studies I had to endure).

It went to the Senate and was passed there as well – unanimously.

You can probably see where this is going.

Trump vetoed the bill.

For all we know, the veto will be overturned when everyone comes back to Congress. But who is to say the funds to finish the project won’t be impounded. Or just withdrawn altogether like the funds to complete the wind farms off the coast of New England. One of those unfinished wind farms was already generating 4 megawatts of power.

It’s Trump who holds the checkbook. He controls the horizontal and the vertical and if you do something that makes him mad, he’ll do something petty and/or destructive to get back at you. It’s all about getting even.

This is what the Unitary Executive Theory leads to.

As for Boebert, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was next person to follow Marjorie Taylor Green out the door. There might be a deeper well of disgust for Trump there in her history and leaving could seriously endanger the Republicans’ teensy tiny majority in the House. Let’s put loyalty to the test.

I’d love for Trump to finally be toppled by a short, skinny gun totin’ woman from Colorado who is sickened by the idea of sweaty old rich men getting away with forcing themselves on thirteen year olds they think they’ve bought.

***************

Here’s Lauren’s response:

She doesn’t sound as deferential, apologetic or servile as some of her colleagues. Lauren would not be welcome at a cabinet meeting. No. She sounds, um, what’s the word?

Fearless.

Some of Trump’s friends are pedophiles

Also, the women who were preyed upon by Epstein and Trump’s friends, did not deserve the honor of a meeting at the White House. Check out this update by Bryan Taylor Cohen:

Also, I hope Marjorie Taylor Greene recorded Trump losing it over the speakerphone. It’s always entertaining when someone from Georgia records a Trump phone call.

“Radical Leftist Scum” don’t vote for pedophiles.

Trumpers do.*

There. I said it. Call us elitists. We can take it.

Conversation over.

“*” You know it’s true. He’s done everything else.

Happy Yuletide!

Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Solstice to everyone.

I was cooking and eating today so this post is late. But tomorrow is Boxing Day so this, my favorite Christmas Carol, is appropriate for all ages, religious or non-religious. Enjoy!

Stuff no one voted for in 2024

1.) A child sexual predator in the White House (I didn’t say who. For all we know, there may be more than one😉)

2.) 2/3rds of a White House

3.) The Nation currently known as The Pirates of the Caribbean

4.) The US stealing Greenland.

5.) International war criminal, wanted by the ICC, walking around Alaska without being arrested.

6.) The president actually agreeing with the “peace plan” of the international war criminal.

7.) Canada feeling threatened by us and honestly saying that being part of the US is the absolutely last thing in the world it wants.

8.) The president and Vice President yelling at the current leader of the free world, making fun of his clothes and asking him to say “thank you”. Not a good look.

9.) Tariff taxes on almost everything we buy.

10.) Republicans passing the stupidest bill in history and causing harm to countless Americans.

11.) Giving billionaires another tax cut. Because you know, they work so hard.

12.) The president accusing Americans of buying too many things for Christmas while his AG is issuing a list of behaviors that will get you tagged as a domestic terrorist, one of them being an Anti-Capitalist, which makes the president a domestic terrorist. Folks you can’t make this stuff up.

13.) Immigrant children being arrested in classrooms or being left without parents.

14.) Immigrants shipped off to brutal prisons or war zones without due process.

15.) Americans getting wiped out by natural disasters and not getting helped by FEMA because they live in states the president doesn’t like.

16.) The governor of California posting tweets in the style of the president and being admonished by Fox News hosts who are running for the smelling salts because the tweets are childish and stupid.

17.) Making childhood vaccines optional. (let the test failures begin!).

18.) Renaming of the Department of Defense without actually renaming the Department of Defense.

19.) Marjorie Taylor Greene making some serious attempts to sound rational.

20.) The US is sanctioned by its former allies for a systemic pattern of dangerous behavior. (Still waiting for this one but with 8 days left on my 2025 Bingo card, I think we’re going to make it.)

What was on your list?

“If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation…

If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed”. – J. Reuben Clark

Check this out. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%208/EFTA00025010.pdf

Is this the official URL of the Department of Justice? I can’t tell if this is sketchy or not. (Just checked. Yes it is the department of justice URL) This is the kind of thing that gets you jailed for life. It goes beyond what civilized people tolerate on any level. Wow. Omg, is this what Putin had over Trump?? Golden Showers sound wholesome in comparison. 

Im not saying this is true. Nobody should be accused of something like this without an investigation. The thing that makes it sort of believable is what Epstein said about how evil Trump actually is.

I don’t see how Trump can survive this politically. It’s like the Mormon shelf metaphor. To be a Mormon in good standing, you have to put your doubts, unsettling information, and disturbing thoughts about cultish initiation rites on a shelf and ignore them. But it only takes stumbling on one extra shocking thing, one hour with the CES letter to bring the whole shelf down. 

Unfortunately for Trump, there is more than enough in these documents to crash many shelves in the next few days without this heinous material.  That’s because Trumpers have always known that Trump was a bad guy. It’s just that he was their bad guy. So they put up with a lot of his bullying behavior. But this kind of document dump has information that goes well beyond bullying and stupid nicknames. Plus the effects of his policies are starting to affect them personally now and things just don’t seem to add up. Cracks are starting to form because there’s a lot to carry around and force your mind to ignore. That can’t last much longer. Every revelation will seem more and more credible and now all his stonewalling and coverup will look like he had a reason to keep all of it hidden.

Stick a fork in him. He’s done.

No really. This is the end of his occupation of the White House.

Gobsmacking Stupidity

You know that saying “never attribute to malice what may easily be explained by stupidity”?

Check this out (Bluesky posts aren’t enabled in WordPress yet so you may need to embiggen the image to get the full effect):

Seriously?

Most of the clever, curious, persistent, Maguiver people, regardless of degree, do not count themselves among the Trumpers. I guess that Bondi et al figured that Trumpers wouldn’t be able to figure this stuff out by themselves.

So we did it for them.

No problem. You’re welcome. Anytime.

****************

Following up on Bari Weiss failing to close the barn door and realizing too late that the CECOT 60 Minutes piece she suppressed for Trump was released to Global TV anyway and posted all over social media by our northern neighbors:

🤣😅😂😅🤣

It’s one of the best lines from Game of Thrones

Ce n’est pas une salle de bal.

This is not a conspiracy theory. It’s a carefully constructed hypothesis based on available evidence and other similar construction projects elsewhere (Israel).

If it’s a matter of national security, you’d think the Congressional committees in the national security/intelligence zone would need to know about it.

If it’s about crafting a AI fueled panopticon Palantir-esque surveillance state nine stories under the White House that uses all of our PII to keep us in line (thanks Elon🤨), the rest of us should know about it.

If the video is correct, once it’s built, it will become a fortress to keep the rest of us out while it controls every aspect of our lives.

Quick note on the Palantir: the name is from Tolkien’s legendarium. They are seeing stones. They can watch events that are happening far away but they can also be used to deliver disinformation to enemies to disastrous ends. Like disinformation could get any worse in this country.