When the Department of Justice Becomes an Insult Comedian

 

Assessing whether, when and how much [Trump] is defying the courts is complicated by a new phenomenon ... a collapse in the credibility of representations by the Justice Department. These days, its lawyers are sometimes sent to court with no information, sometimes instructed to make arguments that are factually or legally baseless, and sometimes punished for being honest .... It may be an appearance by a hapless lawyer who has or claims to have no information. Or it may be a legal argument so outlandish as to amount to insolence.

 --Adam Liptak, NYTimes 

Back in February, after the Associated Press continued to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its reporting, thus ignoring Donald Jethro Trump's preferred new name for it, Jethro barred them from White House events. The AP went to court, and a Federal judge in Washington told the government that it cannot punish the news organization for the content of its speech. 

But as of this week, the AP was still being turned away. Most recently, they weren't allowed into the infamous club act between Jethro and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, when both presidents claimed (as bald-faced as any two leaders have ever lied) that there's not a thing either of them can do to return a mistakenly deported man to his wife.

More. "Long after judges ordered the administration to unfreeze funding from contracts and grants disbursed by U.S.A.I.D. and FEMA, contractors and states led by Democrats repeatedly reported that payments were still being held up. Twice in February, judges granted motions to enforce their orders, finding that the administration was dragging its feet." 

Jethro started a whole cascade of disrespect when he defied a judge's order to turn around the plane carrying Abrego Garcia to the gulag in El Salvador. That court ordered Garcia brought back. Trump appealed to his gang on the Supreme Court, and apparently all nine justices agreed that the president needed to do what the lower court said, "facilitating" the return of Garcia. The definition of "facilitate" proved slippery. The Federal judge in Maryland wasn't amused. Last Thursday, she asked the government three questions: Where was Mr. Abrego Garcia being held? What steps had the government taken to get him home? And what additional steps did it plan to take?

Trump's marionette at DOJ

Trump's DOJ lawyers refused to respond, at first, saying in a court filing last Friday that they needed more time, and then at a hearing that day that they had no answers to the judge’s questions. No answer to even where Garcia was? "You've failed to comply with this court’s order,” the judge noted and demanded daily updates by 5 p.m., "a deadline the administration has treated as a suggestion" (according to Liptak).

On Saturday, an administration official grudgingly acknowledged that “Abrego Garcia is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador.” The official said nothing about what the government was doing to facilitate the prisoner’s return.

Garcia’s lawyers have urged the judge to consider holding the government in contempt. Seems appropriate. The Trump DOJ's contempt for the law must be apparent from the deepest space.

A Wrinkle in the Theft of a Supreme Court Seat

The "wrinkle" in the title ought to be a definitive foil to the corruption of the North Carolina judiciary, but I'm cynical enough by now to remember what they do with wrinkles -- they iron them out. Just disappear them with heat.

Courtroom maneuvers have never been my specialty, and I have to strain sometimes to understand legal theories, so I'm hanging very frankly on the reporting of Bryan Anderson (whose Anderson Alerts is required reading) to understand what's going forward in Republican Jefferson Griffin's quest to steal Allison Riggs's seat on the NC Supremes. 

To overturn Riggs's 734-vote victory, Griffin wanted way over 60,000 votes thrown out, including an obscure little group of 260 North Carolinians whom Griffin labeled “never residents.” And you know what? The two Republicans on the North Carolina Court of Appeals -- apparently without the most basic attempt to verify Griffin's data (?) -- simply accepted Griffin's claim and ordered the State Board of Elections to remove all 260 voters from the count. The state Supreme Court upheld that decision.

You wanna know the best part? Those 260 have no recourse, no mechanism for appeal, and actually no notice probably that their whole voter registration no longer exists.

So Bryan Anderson went snooping -- "review of public records, news clips, social media posts, and interviews" -- and soon found 16 voters -- out of no-telling-how-many there really are -- who have resided in North Carolina, or still live in North Carolina, "some having spent their entire childhood in North Carolina, continuing to pay property taxes or working in the state." But the two gullible judges swallowed Griffin's zero evidence and stupidly eliminated the basic rights of 260 voters who happened to be overseas when they requested their absentee ballots.

Notice the last one is from Watauga.

16 Alleged “Never Resident” Voters Who Stand To Have Their Ballots Wrongfully Discarded

Vidyaranya Gargeya (Guilford County): A retired professor who taught at UNC-Greensboro for 30 years who, according to the school, has visited every college in the state. He’s paid property taxes at the same suburban Guilford County home he’s owned since 2003, according to public records. And voting records show he voted in-person on Election Day eight times without issue, and has voted in every midterm and presidential general election since 2006. He appears to have cast an overseas mail-in ballot for the 2024 election. And his next door neighbor confirmed on Saturday that Gargeya does indeed live next to him.

Josiah Young (Jackson County): Young was raised in Webster, played basketball for Jackson County Early College and runs a drone photography business based in western North Carolina. Currently living in Spain.

Michelle Carrillo-Corujo (Guilford County): Corujo grew up in North Carolina. She attended Crestdale Middle School in Matthews in 2015 and has largely remained in North Carolina ever since. She graduated from UNC-Greensboro last year with a degree in political science and recently moved to the Netherlands for further academic pursuits.

Holly Arrowood (Henderson County): Arrowood has been a North Carolina voter since 2008 and has cast a ballot in-person on Election Day seven times. She also appears to still live in Chapel Hill.

Jean-Louis Mondon (Henderson County): Mondon has been a U.S. citizen since 1986, has long lived in North Carolina and has voted in the state since at least 1994. He taught English, French and Spanish at Blue Ridge Community College from 2005 to 2009, runs a Christian blog and is a private tutor and linguist.

David Eberhard (Orange County): Eberhard is a longtime neurologist and taught at UNC-Chapel Hill from 2011 to 2016.

 
Austyn Blamy (Union County): Blamy graduated from high school at Cuthbertson High School in Waxhaw and has been a seasonal swim coach there since 2018, according to her LinkedIn page. Blamy was also a D1 athlete from 2023-2024 for Liberty University’s swim team.

Ayse Babahan (Wake County): Babahan was born in North Carolina, but grew up in Istanbul. She graduated from the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York and is now an actress living overseas.

Vicki Brent (Wake County): Brent attended Millbrook High School in Raleigh from 2017 to 2021 and served on the Wake County Black Student Coalition.

 
Eric Hoffman (Wake County): Hoffman attended UNC-Chapel Hill from 2014 to 2016 and got a master’s degree in business administration and has been a registered North Carolina voter since 2011. He’s since worked out of Holly Springs and Australia.

Sergio Cutiva Valencia (Watauga County): Valencia is an Appalachian State University alum who graduated in 2022.

The Slow-Motion Mugging of Allison Riggs

 

I've spent some time trying to grok what the "North Carolina Four" on the state's Supreme Court -- Paul Newby, Phil Berger Jr., Tamara Barringer, and Trey Allen -- decided on Friday in the Griffin v. Riggs rigamarole. And then what was decided yesterday after Riggs appealed in Federal Court. First, the Fab Four overturned the 2-1 decision by the Court of Appeals that accepted Jefferson Griffin's argument that over 60,000 ballots were illegal and must be "cured" to count. Instead, the NC Four accepted those 60,000 ballots as valid, but cherrypicked themselves enough votes cast by mail from overseas by a tranch of liberal sojourners who didn't photocopy their picture ids. The Supreme Court ordered the Court of Appeals to access the eligibility of over 5,500 voters, most of them overseas voters whose absentee ballots were not accompanied by a photocopy of a photo ID or ID Exception Form. Anderson Alerts has a spreadsheet available here listing all the voters whose ballots remain in question, "anywhere from 1,409 to 5,509." There's actually an opportunity to particularly target the "lean-Democratic" vote in the urban counties of Buncombe, Forsyth, and Durham. Challenged voters have 30 days to cure their ballots. Tall order.

Allison Riggs, who won the election by over 700 votes, promptly appealed the Fab Four decision to Federal court, where it landed in front of Judge Richard Myers (who's had a hand in the Griffin v. Riggs case before), a Trump appointee who ordered that the Supreme Court's previous order must proceed, but the election will not be certified until Judge Myers sez it's certified.

Jefferson Griffin is neither a gentleman nor a decent human being. His use of the law has produced a perversion of the law that shows me exactly the kind of "justice" he pursues. He's not fit to sit in judgment of the world's cringiest grin contest.

I don't know what we do when they finalize Griffin's theft of Riggs's election. It's going to feel like Bastille fury rising in the gullet, isn't it? Then what?

Checking in on the Most Important Republican Primary of 2026

 

Why, of course I'm trying to follow the developing Republican primary between Phil Berger, paterfamilias to a whole tribe of power-wielders in Rockingham County and statewide and the absolute boss of the NC General Assembly, and current Rockingham Sheriff Sam Page, who plays a cowboy-hat-wearing scourge of God. (I've written extensively about Sam Page, especially his crusade against Berger's sudden affection for gambling casinos. Use the search engine above.)

WXII in Winston did some pretty in-depth reporting on this race. Sam Page said that Berger had been in office too long, and he'd lost touch with the people he's supposed to be serving. Berger fired back and may have drawn blood:

"Yeah, so I think Sam Page is probably looking in the mirror," WXII quoted Berger. "He's been the sheriff of Rockingham County for over 20 years. It's no secret that he's spent the last seven or eight years at the border, focused more on things outside of the county. It's no secret that the jail in Rockingham county, because of his failure to look after the job he has now, has deteriorated to the point where insurance premiums for the county have gone through the roof." WXII found out, indeed, that insurance premiums at the jail had increased by 118% and the deductible went up by a factor of 20. That doesn't sound good.

Berger's in trouble for the first time in his career. Really in trouble. He alienated many -- Berger Senior along with his other son Kevin, who runs the Rockingham County Commission -- with manipulations and machinations the Berger junta pursued to get a gambling casino into Rockingham. The strait-laced sheriff Page led the opposition like an angry apostle of the Lord. Sam Page has been reelected six or seven times and is said (by everyone) to be "very popular." Berger's going to do what he can to tarnish that.

Berger runs a machine, a powerful machine that can occasionally get its gears shredded. I don't know how mean the super pious Sam Page is willing to become, but it's going to take mean to defeat Phil Berger.

Actual Dirt Is the Only Vaccination

 

Trump has no philosophy or ideology. His only governing principle is to hurt people he hates. And that’s a lot of people.

--Gary Pearce

Annabelle Hydrangeas. That is not
our garden

For example, the whole state of Maine, because Maine's governor -- a woman, and how dare she! -- said she wouldn't bow to Trump about barring transgender women from sports. She famously also said, and in public, “I have spent the better part of my career listening to loud men talk tough to disguise their weakness.” Trump promised to cut all Federal spending to Maine.

Trump has taken Russia off the leash, and is letting Putin swallow Ukraine, because Jethro can't get over how Zelenskyy refused to manufacture dirt on Joe Biden. A whole nation gets destroyed.

Trump hates Anthony Fauci, Mike Pompeo, and John Bolton, who were all important cogs in Trump 1.0, but insufficiently slavish, apparently, and Jethro removed their security details. Pompeo and Bolton have been targeted for assassination by Iran, and Anthony Fauci has more death-threats against him than Tesla.

I could come up with examples of Trump's mean pettiness for hours, but contemplating all that wreckage is exactly what has driven me into my current obsession with gardening. I've been throwing myself into raking out beds, composting weeds and debris, and mulching every blessed inch of the place with well-aged horse manure, and during that labor with dirt and plants I forget Trump 2.0 and its absolute madness and danger.

We have extensive gardens of perennials, shrubs, and trees -- a collector's garden with many rare natives but also plenty of exotics, particularly the Asians (because many of those specimen species are as close to outer space that I'm likely to come). I have two people who help me, not counting Pam, who will eventually have worked her way on her knees through every inch of every bed, lifting and dividing, and discouraging where discouragement is required, and uncovering the over-taken for a new shot at light -- the "editing" that every well-kept garden requires.

I'm an editor too, though old age has made knee-work more difficult. When stooping, I'm reminded that stoop-labor was the curse on Adam (and talk about mean old gods who love to hurt people!). Gardening is order; also chaos; reassuring in its repetition; but combustible with mutation. It's invigorating; also frustrating, rambunctious, and capricious. With invasives and aggressive native weeds, it can seem like Ukraine, losing territory to relentless plunder.

But it's a cold rainy day today, so I'm inside psychoanalyzing myself instead of dividing Annabelle Hydrangeas.

Once Bitten, Twice Shy?

 

The mean eyes of
Keith Kitwell

Republican NCHouse member Keith Kidwell filed H 804 which would outlaw abortion in North Carolina at every stage of pregnancy, but new House Speaker Destin Hall quickly announced that the bill had been assigned to the Rules Committee where it will die a quick death, because Destin Hall is no fool and he knows that another extreme anti-abortion bill could be a killer of Republican careers.

“I don’t think there’s any real desire in our caucus to hear that particular bill, and so, it’s not going to be heard in committee,” Hall told reporters. End of story.

Granted that last year the expected backlash against the NCGOP for reducing the legal window for abortion from 20 weeks to 12 didn't quite materialize, at least not to the point of decisively ending the super-majority of Republicans in the General Assembly.

The meanness of old white guys about women's bodily autonomy gets put in the corner by the good sense of young white Republican men who understand better the political winds, not that he necessarily respects women more.

Wiley Nickel Jumps; Is There Water in the Pool?

 

Wiley Nickel applauding Roy Cooper
in earlier days

Back in January, ex-Congressman Wiley Nickel, who's been itching to run for the US Senate against Thom Tillis, told reporter Bryan Anderson that he wouldn't want to run in a primary against the much better known and frankly more politically formidable ex-Governor Roy Cooper. Don't know what's happened to change that, but yesterday Nickel announced his campaign for Senate, and Cooper is still "considering."

Cooper will be the instant frontrunner if and when he announces a campaign against Tillis. Maybe Nickel is trying to flush Cooper out, but will he graciously step aside when Cooper announces, or will he insist on going through defeat in a primary?

Politico reported:

“I have absolutely nothing but good things to say about former Governor Roy Cooper,” Nickel said. “My focus is Thom Tillis, who is voting over and over with Donald Trump on disastrous policies that are going to harm North Carolina.”

A person directly familiar with Cooper’s thinking granted anonymity to speak about private conversations said the governor is still “actively considering the decision to run” and he’ll decide after he completes his Harvard University fellowship later this spring. “Announcements by other potential candidates will not have an impact on his decision,” the person added.

 

Did NC Somehow Elect a Non-MAGA Republican as Our Treasurer

 

NC Treasurer Brad Briner

Bryan Anderson has the scoop: Brad Briner calls Trump's tariffs a tax that hits us all, with only "bad choices" ahead:

Republican State Treasurer Brad Briner likened the president’s new tariffs to a corporate tax, and he sees more pain ahead. He said the tariffs will result in some combination of three outcomes for North Carolinians: Companies raising prices at consumers’ expense, companies cutting costs (and presumably payrolls) to protect their margins at the expense of workers, or companies accepting lower profits at the expense of investors.

“We don’t know if these tariffs will stick, or which of the three bad choices companies will make as a result,” Briner told The Assembly in a statement. “I also don’t think humpty dumpty can be put back together again. At the very least, countries and companies will be much more hesitant to trust that U.S. policy will remain constant, which slows decision making and lowers economic activity definitionally.”

 

January 6th Participant Becomes Apostle

 

Nathan Baer, Jan. 6th convicted participant

A week ago (April 1st), Kyle Perrotti published the most fascinating report on a pardoned January 6th rioter apostle, Nathan Baer. ("Not a rioter." He tells a fascinating story of being actually led to the front-lines of battle by the hand of Jesus, for the singular purpose of spreading peace.) Baer was the featured speaker at a meeting of the Macon County Republican Women's Club. He spoke for almost two hours -- a tale of his personal journey that had some of those women in tears by the end. 

Perrotti has a hell of a lead:

On Jan. 6, 2021, Nathan Baer stormed the Capitol in Washington, D.C. On April 26, 2023, he was arrested in Asheville and hit with numerous charges. On April 5, 2024, he pleaded guilty to one felony and was sentenced to four months in federal prison. On Jan. 21 of this year, he was pardoned by President Donald Trump and released from incarceration. On March 19, he spoke to the Macon County Republican Women’s Club in Franklin. (Smoky Mountain Times)

I come away from the article understanding this man Baer as a visionary libertarian, and not a little paranoid, seeing Jesus in all things and understanding the whole world otherwise as a giant ganging up that must be opposed. Baer told those Republican women that "while he wanted to support Trump, it was also something bigger — it was a sort of calling to take a stand against the cabal he perceives has corrupted the whole political system. His talk, which seemed at some times like an academic lecture and others like a sermon, verged into moral philosophy and religion." 

Baer had become a fairly notorious fugitive before he was finally identified on Feb. 21, 2021, because of indisputable photos with Baer easily identifiable, front and center during the infamous "Tunnel assault" on the West Front of the Capitol. One photo shows him nearly nose-to-nose with Officer Michael Fanone. Another shows him hefting a police shield over his head to pass it forward to the frontline. Identified by a tip that a particular musical performer pictured on a Brooklyn theater's website bore a striking resemblance to Baer. Yep, Baer, an aspiring actor/singer. The FBI didn't arrive to arrest him in Asheville, where he was living with his sister, until June 2023. 

The infamous photo of Baer face-to-face with Officer Fanone

A singer? You bet! Baer apparently has an astounding baritone, "seeming to fill the room as if coming from a surround-sound stereo system." Baer punctuated his talk with resounding, a capella renditions of "America the Beautiful" and "How Great Thou Art," the old George Beverly Shea number guaranteed to put everyone in the right frame to receive the Lord. 

He veered into both the "visionary" and the Libertarian -- Ron Paul is his hero, "who showed me what godly courage means,” Baer said. He also served up a big slice of that inherent paranoia. He said he wasn't so opposed to Obama and Hillary as he was on his guard against the “military industrial complex” (that old warhorse) nefariously running everything, running the bigwigs, running the economy. The reactions of the women: "Some topics, like how Wikileaks leader Julian Assange should be pardoned seemed to receive mixed results; some more obscure topics, like how a corrupt economic system based off the model used for the Bank of London has undermined the United States’ Hamiltonian economic system, seemed off people’s radars entirely."

Baer's saga about his few months' behind bars before Trump liberated him deepens the ambiguities. Perrotti:

There were cliques and gangs. Men would dominate others they perceived as weak. Some correctional officers were crooked and some were territorial. The thing Baer seemed to dislike most about prison was the lack of human connection; even looking someone in the eye is a faux pas worthy of immediate conflict. Callousness is a virtue and loneliness is the byproduct.

He began to teach singing to fellow inmates, making himself useful, fulfilling WWJD.