DL Open Thread: Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024

READ THIS! IN ITS ENTIRETY!  Were I omnipotent, I would make you read it.  I know you’re not all TPM members (you should be), so I’ll excerpt what I can:

First came the news that prosecutors in special counsel David Weiss’s office had decided that the confidential FBI informant who had been one of Biden’s top accusers had been lying and that they were charging him for lying to the FBI. That next step is critical. Informants lie to prosecutors all the time. They seldom get charged. It’s one standard to decide your informant isn’t telling the truth and/or won’t hold up at trial. It’s an entirely different one to think that you can prove they knowingly lied beyond a reasonable doubt. Clearly investigators felt they had caught Alexander Smirnov dead to rights. Yesterday came news that Smirnov has admitted that he got his false stories from Russian intelligence officers. Smirnov isn’t just at the center of the DOJ investigation, he’s at the center of what we have to generously call James Comer’s House inquiry, the premise for Joe Biden’s increasingly wobbly impeachment.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers are now claiming…that it was new or newly specific accusations from Smirnov which scuttled the plea deal which blew up as it was being agreed to in a federal court room. (G)iven what we’ve learned over the last week from the prosecution side — the folks who were repeatedly duped and took actions on the basis of disinformation directly from Russian intelligence — it seems to me highly likely that it’s true.

For years I’ve continued saying, against what seems like the unified thinking of every reporter, editorialist and credentialed smart person, that the fabled “Hunter Biden Laptop” was obviously the product of a Russian influence operation. The story was absurd on its face. Somehow Hunter Biden decided in a drugged-up fugue that he needed to take his laptop to a computer repair shop. He then forgot about it. The legally blind owner of the repair shop decided to crack it open and look at the files (as one does, of course) and then somehow managed to get the contents to Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon.

Even though the Smirnov revelations themselves don’t speak directly to the laptop story, they tell us very clearly that Russian intelligence operations have continued to drive stories at the center of the American political debate right up until today.

The real issue, as I note above, is the reporters, editorialists and commentators, who vouched for and credited this whole edifice of lies and bullshit.

That’s about as much as I can excerpt.  But the point has been made–the Russians were behind this disinformation campaign just as they’ve successfully launched false information into our politics since at least 2015.  And the press and the pundits have been complete and utter dupes, and have impacted our politics due to their willingness to swallow this disinformation.

Two Mild Cases Of Schadenfreude.  Courtesy of, can you believe it, the Supreme Court:

GOP Congresscritters Unmasked:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to revive a lawsuit from three House Republicans after their pay was docked for not complying with a pandemic-era mask requirement on the chamber floor.

In a brief order without any noted dissents, the court let stand a lower ruling that tossed the constitutional challenge filed by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.).

Greene racked up over $100K in fines.  Can you say ‘wage garnishment’?

Trump ‘Kraken’ Lawyers Lose Again:

The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Donald Trump-allied lawyers who faced legal sanctions for promoting bogus litigation surrounding his 2020 presidential election loss.

A rejection from the nation’s highest court on Tuesday will leave in place a 2023 ruling from a federal appeals court in Michigan that upheld the sanctions against them.

Sidney Powell and Lin Wood – among a team of so-called “Kraken” attorneys who pursued bogus legal efforts to overturn Mr Trump’s loss in 2020 – faced legal consequences in federal court in 2021 for a spurious lawsuit to reject Michigan’s results.

A ruling that year from US District Judge Linda Parker stated that the attorneys’ lawsuit was based on “speculation, conjecture, and unwarranted suspicion” and ordered them to pay more than $175,000 in sanctions to the state.

Still More Schadenfreude.  Should Mike Lindell take this lying down, at least he’ll have a shitty pillow upon which to rest his noggin:

In 2021, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell offered $5 million to anyone who could disprove his claim that he had data showing voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Now, he must pay a 64-year-old from Nevada that award, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Lindell, a prominent election denier and staunch supporter of former president Donald Trump, claimed to have data showing Chinese interference in the 2020 race. If someone could “Prove Mike Wrong,” as the challenge was called, and show the data was unrelated to the election, they would get the payout, Lindell said ahead of an August 2021 “cyber symposium” held in South Dakota where contestants would review the files.

Robert Zeidman, a computer forensics expert who voted for Trump twice, did just that, a federal judge in Minnesota determined Wednesday, upholding a previous ruling from a private arbitration panel. Zeidman is owed the $5 million payout plus interest, Judge John Tunheim wrote in his Wednesday ruling.

Police Unions Suck:  Support Trump despite Jan.6 attacks on cops:

As Donald Trump continues to glorify the accused and convicted criminals who beat and maimed police officers as part of his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt, he appears to have unlikely allies: police unions, who thus far have not offered a single word of criticism.

One, in fact, has already endorsed the former president as he runs for the White House again. “President Trump’s history of support for the men and women of law enforcement is unmatched,” the International Union of Police Associations said in its Feb. 6 announcement.

IUPA’s silence on Trump’s praise for accused and convicted cop-beaters, though, is not unique. Police unions across the country, most notably the 375,000-member Fraternal Order of Police, which represents the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C., and the Capitol Police, the two agencies whose officers were attacked that day, have said nothing.